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They felt helpless in the face of the crackdown, so they planned a protest in the heart of their own community.

"A 3.5% tax is unlikely to deter these remittances. After all the main motivation for migration - migrants trying to cross oceans and rivers and mountains - is to send money home to help helpless family members."

“They want you to feel helpless, they want you to feel hopeless, and if you feel that way, then you literally are playing into their hand,” Crockett said.

"I feel like a drifting duckweed tossed in wind and storm," she said, using a common Chinese expression used to describe feeling both uncertain and helpless.

"We feel pretty helpless. There's not really much we can do about the situation if we don't get the financial support that I think we deserve at this point," agrees bowler Abtaha Maqsood.