A report by rights group Safeguard Defenders and research indicate that China is increasingly preventing people, including foreign executives, from leaving the country.
The report shows that exit bans have ensnared numerous Chinese nationals and foreigners, while a Reuters analysis has found a surge in court cases involving such bans in recent years.
This trend is causing concern among foreign business lobby groups, who see it as a contradictory message, particularly as Chinese authorities claim that the country is open for business after three years of tight Covid-19 restrictions.
The Safeguard Defenders report also notes that China has expanded the legal landscape for exit bans and has increasingly employed them, sometimes without legal justification since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
The group estimates that authorities ban “tens of thousands” of Chinese citizens from leaving at any one time.
It also cites a 2022 academic paper that found 128 cases of foreigners being exit-banned between 1995 and 2019, including 29 Americans and 44 Canadians.
China-US Tensions
Focus on the exit bans comes as China-US tensions have risen over trade and security disputes and contrasts with China’s message that it is opening up to overseas investment and travel after the isolation of its Covid curbs.
The Reuters analysis of records on exit bans, from China’s supreme court database, shows an eightfold increase in cases mentioning bans between 2016 and 2022.
Last week, China passed a new counter-espionage law that enables authorities to impose exit bans on individuals, both Chinese and foreign, who are 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 EU impose travel bans on some criminal suspects but generally not for civil claims.
China’s ministry of public security did not respond to Reuters 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, according to three people familiar with the matter. The company, the executive and China’s public security bureau did not respond to requests for comment.
Mintz said in late March that authorities had raided the firm’s China office and detained five local staff.