Summary Box: Learning French helps Chinese leave
NEW ESCAPE HATCH: Thousands of people in China are trying to write their own tickets out of the country — in French. Many who want to leave are middle-class professionals earning the equivalent of $32,000 or more in China.
MOVE TO QUEBEC: Those desperate to emigrate have discovered that Canada's francophone province has no immigration caps and no backlog of applicants like the country's national program. But Quebec requires that immigrants have a working knowledge of the local tongue.
COUNTERTREND: French is losing ground as a language to learn in many parts of the world — often to Mandarin.
