The restrictions are not entirely new. Outbound travel was limited during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tibetans and Uyghurs have been systematically denied passports since at least 2013. Other rounds of forced passport recalls occurred in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The recent wave is driven in part by growing national security concerns that aim to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing abroad and high-profile personnel from leaking state secrets. Ryan McMorrow, Nian Liu, Sun Yu, and Gloria Li from The Financial Times reported this week that Chinese schoolteachers are the latest target of these state-imposed travel restrictions.
lørdag 12. oktober 2024
Chinese authorities are making it harder for citizens to travel abroad or emigrate
Chinese authorities are making it harder for citizens to emigrate in the first place, notably by forcing some citizens to hand in their passports. The South China Morning Post reported in June that “groups covered by the travel restrictions include almost all of China’s civil servants, most employees in the state-owned finance sector and state-owned enterprises, and the leadership at universities and hospitals,” and “even government contractors at the community level.”
The restrictions are not entirely new. Outbound travel was limited during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tibetans and Uyghurs have been systematically denied passports since at least 2013. Other rounds of forced passport recalls occurred in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The recent wave is driven in part by growing national security concerns that aim to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing abroad and high-profile personnel from leaking state secrets. Ryan McMorrow, Nian Liu, Sun Yu, and Gloria Li from The Financial Times reported this week that Chinese schoolteachers are the latest target of these state-imposed travel restrictions.
The restrictions are not entirely new. Outbound travel was limited during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tibetans and Uyghurs have been systematically denied passports since at least 2013. Other rounds of forced passport recalls occurred in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The recent wave is driven in part by growing national security concerns that aim to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing abroad and high-profile personnel from leaking state secrets. Ryan McMorrow, Nian Liu, Sun Yu, and Gloria Li from The Financial Times reported this week that Chinese schoolteachers are the latest target of these state-imposed travel restrictions.
