Passports surrendered: Inside China’s expanding web of exit controls

(Edited and refined by Candice Chan, with the assistance of AI translation.)

About a month ago, a friend who works at a Chinese bank grumbled to me. He said he had hoped to take his children to Singapore during the summer holidays, as the weather in China is hot in July and August, and Singapore would be an escape from the heat. Besides, that is China’s peak travel season, when domestic travel is expensive and everywhere is crowded, making for a poor experience.

Unfortunately, his passport had been surrendered to his employer for centralised safekeeping. Retrieving it to travel overseas required navigating multiple layers of approval. By the time all the necessary signatures and official stamps were in place, his children’s summer holiday would likely have been over. My friend lamented that while China now grants visa-free access to more and more countries, without the freedom to hold and use one’s passport, one still cannot go anywhere.

My friend's experience is far from unique. In recent years, many of my Chinese friends have complained that approval for overseas travel has become increasingly stringent, whether for private holidays or business trips. Restrictions now extend not only to whether they may leave the country, but also to how long they are allowed to stay abroad. The rules apply not only to civil servants and employees of state-owned enterprises. Professionals in the financial sector, university researchers, and even some secondary school teachers wishing to travel overseas at their own expense are also required to go through the approval process.

For these people, going overseas is troublesome, but in principle the door remains open. But for those who have been placed under exit control measures, the issue is not just red tape.

Why restrict?

For years, Chinese administrative and law enforcement authorities have barred people deemed to pose certain risks from leaving the country. Besides criminal suspects, individuals subject to court enforcement orders and corrupt officials, businesspeople under investigation may also be placed under exit restrictions. More controversially, some politically sensitive figures and dissidents have likewise been prohibited from leaving China.

Now, given tense relations between China and some Western countries, and amid an intensified focus on counter-espionage, preventing leaks of state secrets and resisting foreign infiltration, alongside an increasingly fierce technological and artificial intelligence (AI) rivalry with the US, reports of Beijing tightening exit controls on national security grounds have become more frequent.

Some employees of foreign companies have reportedly been barred from leaving China after being accused of collecting sensitive information. Meanwhile, certain Chinese technology specialists and experts have effectively been confined within the country, sometimes to prevent the outflow of critical technologies, and sometimes to protect them from becoming embroiled in incidents similar to the Meng Wanzhou case after travelling overseas. According to reports, leading AI researchers at private Chinese technology firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek have also been placed on travel restriction lists because they are engaged in work deemed strategically important to the country.

On 31 July, the authorities released the new State Council Regulations on Exit-Entry Administration (“the Regulations”), further tightening the country’s exit and entry management regime and laying out various circumstances under which people may be barred from leaving China. The move sparked widespread discussion, triggering a wave of panic on social media outside of China, with some academics even suggesting people should leave quickly while they still can.

Who is a risk?

Looking across the debate, attention has focused mainly on two issues.

First, the definition of high-risk countries. Under the Regulations, the authorities may, when necessary, advise Chinese citizens against travelling to countries or regions assigned the highest risk rating or those experiencing frequent incidents that seriously endanger personal safety. However, beyond the factors explicitly listed in the document — such as war or armed conflict, public security, natural disasters, major accidents and infectious disease outbreaks — are there other considerations, including diplomatic strategy or political factors?

The second issue concerns the repeated references to national security in the Regulations. Under the new rules, when exit control measures are imposed in cases that “may affect national security or criminal investigations”, the authorities are not required to inform the individual concerned. In other words, some people may find themselves effectively prohibited from leaving the country without knowing the specific reason, and without any means of appeal.

Among Chinese citizens living overseas, the most widely discussed provision is that individuals who engage in illegal or criminal activities abroad that endanger China’s national security or interests may be prohibited from leaving China again for between six months and three years after returning. Because the definition of “endangering national security and interests” is broad and vague, there is a lot of room for interpretation in enforcement, and there is a question of whether this could become another “catch-all” offence — like a Sword of Damocles hanging over every Chinese citizen living abroad.

The Regulations also specify that Chinese citizens who violate export control laws or regulations governing technology imports and exports, thereby potentially endangering China’s industrial or technological security, may also be barred from leaving the country. This seems to close the loop on earlier media reports that the founders of Chinese start-up Manus had been barred from travelling overseas. For China’s most advanced technology specialists, personal overseas travel may increasingly be constrained by an invisible web of restrictions.

National security a real concern

Do these new rules mean, as some commentators claim, that China is once again closing itself off from the outside world? That is an exaggeration. The Regulations are primarily aimed at mitigating risks associated with overseas travel, strengthening controls on illegal cross-border movement, safeguarding national security, preventing the outflow of sensitive technologies and regulating agencies that provide overseas travel services. Against the backdrop of rampant cross-border telecommunications fraud, rising illegal migration, intensifying intelligence and espionage activities, and growing technological and industrial competition, there is a practical rationale for using exit controls to protect national interests.

The Regulations are the latest step in China’s incorporation of cross-border movement of people into its broader national security framework, following the introduction of the Export Control Law, the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law and revisions to the Anti-Espionage Law. In this era of expanding security concerns, it is not just China that is placing national security at the top of its policy priorities.

Nevertheless, the concerns following the release of the Regulations are not unfounded. There are questions of whether the rules are clear and transparent, whether they will be consistently enforced, whether there is restraint in administrative discretion, and whether it is a one-size-fits-all approach or becomes increasingly strict, or even abused.

The Regulations are due to take effect on 15 September. Will the anxieties sparked prove to be short-lived, or bring long-term uncertainty and insecurity? How many people will be affected? Will it become more difficult for ordinary citizens to travel whenever they want? We shall see.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “国安思虑下的新边境管控”.

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