China is increasingly barring people from leaving the country, including foreign executives, a jarring message as the authorities say the country is open for business after three years of tight COVID-19 restrictions.
Scores of Chinese and foreigners have been ensnared by exit bans, according to a new report by the rights group Safeguard Defenders, while a Reuters analysis has found an apparent surge of court cases involving such bans in recent years, and foreign business lobbies are voicing concern about the trend.
“Since [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平) took power in 2012, China has expanded the legal landscape for exit bans and increasingly used them, sometimes outside legal justification,” the Safeguard Defenders report reads.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Between 2018 and July of this year, no less than five new or amended [Chinese] laws provide for the use of exit bans, for a total today of 15 laws,” said Laura Harth, the group’s campaign director.
The group estimated “tens of thousands” of Chinese are banned from exit at any one time.
It also cited an academic paper by Chris Carr and Jack Wroldsen published last year that found 128 cases of foreigners being banned from leaving the country between 1995 and 2019, including 29 Americans and 44 Canadians.
Attention on the exit bans comes as China-US tensions have risen over trade and security disputes. This contrasts with China’s message that it is opening up to overseas investment and travel, emerging from the isolation of some of the world’s tightest COVID-19 curbs.
The Reuters analysis of records on exit bans, from China’s Supreme Court database, shows an eight-fold increase in cases mentioning bans between 2016 and last year.
China last week beefed up its counterespionage law, allowing exit bans to be imposed on anyone, Chinese or foreign, who is under investigation.
Most of the cases in the database referring to exit bans are civil, not criminal. Reuters did not find any involving foreigners or politically sensitive subversion or national security issues.
By comparison, the US and the EU impose travel bans on some criminal suspects, but generally not for civil claims.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security did not respond to requests for comment on exit bans, including inquiries on how many individuals, including foreigners, are subject to them.
One person prevented from leaving China this year is a Singaporean executive at the US due-diligence firm Mintz Group, three people familiar with the matter said.
The company, the executive and the Chinese Public Security Bureau did not respond to requests for comment.
Mintz said in late March that the authorities had raided the firm’s China office and detained five local staff.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time said that Mintz was suspected of engaging in unlawful business operations.
Police visited Bain & Co’s office in Shanghai and questioned staff, the US management consultancy said last week.
“Because of rising tensions between the US and China, the salience of this [exit ban] risk has risen,” said Lester Ross, a veteran lawyer in China who has handled exit ban cases.
“I’ve seen a rise in companies and entities being concerned about this and asking for our advice on how to prepare and reduce risks” of exit bans, said Ross, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce’s China policy committee.
Foreign businesses are concerned about the heightened scrutiny and the vague wording of the counterespionage legislation, which says exit bans can be imposed on those who cause “harm to the national security or significant damage to national interests.”
“The uncertainty is huge,” said Jorg Wuttke, head of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “Can you do due diligence? Clarity has to come.”
The EU chamber told Reuters in a statement: “At a time when China is proactively trying to restore business confidence to attract foreign investment, the exit bans send a very mixed signal.”
People barred from leaving China include regular Chinese embroiled in financial disputes as well as rights defenders, advocates and lawyers, and ethnic minorities such as Uighurs in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, according to the Safeguard Defenders report.
It cites a Chinese judicial report saying that 34,000 people were placed under exit bans between 2016 and 2018 for owing money, a 55 percent rise from the same period three years earlier.
Some advocates say the wider use of exit bans reflects tighter security measures under Xi.
“They can find any reason to stop you from leaving the country,” said Li Xiang (李翔), a Chinese rights advocate who was denied exit for two years before escaping from China in 2017 and later receiving asylum in the US.
“China doesn’t have the rule of law,” she told by telephone from California. “The law is used to serve the purposes of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s very effective.”
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
RSS