Figures released by the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR showed that around 12,000 Chinese nationals sought asylum overseas in 2012, the year that Xi took office as CCP general secretary. By 2021 that number rose to nearly 120,000.
According to the release of Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO based in Madrid, Spain, “By 2019, that figure surpassed 100,000, and despite travel restrictions both in China and worldwide, it continued to increase in both 2020 and 2021. Last year, that figure reached nearly 120,000 people. That is ten times the number of asylum seekers the year Xi came to power.”
“In one year of Xi Jinping’s rule, 2021, China had more asylum-seekers than during the last eight years of the rule of his predecessor Hu Jintao.”
“In fact, since 2012 China has seen some 730,000 people seek asylum. Another 170,000+ persons are living outside of China under refugee status. The number of refugees has held steady for a long time (Many of them are Tibetans living in India).”
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), June 18, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202206180103.aspx