China tightens control of overseas travel in sweeping new law
President Xi Jinping steps up efforts to secure state secrets, advanced technology and highly skilled workers
Joe Leahy in Beijing, Sun Yu in New York and Arjun Neil Alim in Hong Kong
The new regulations come into force on Tuesday © Qilai Shen/BloombergChina has implemented sweeping new controls on overseas travel for Chinese citizens as President Xi Jinping steps up efforts to secure state secrets, advanced technology and highly skilled workers.
The regulations, which come into force on Tuesday, will formalise creeping restrictions on overseas trips for mid-to-senior-level civil servants, Communist Party cadres and state-owned enterprise employees, analysts say.
It will also cover private citizens working in sensitive areas, according to immigration experts.
Those who breach the new rules will face steep fines and exit bans ranging from three months to an indefinite period.
The law takes China back towards the decades-long prohibition on foreign travel that prevailed during the Mao era, analysts say.
Those restrictions only fully eased when Beijing opened up to trade.
“The result could be a gradual shift back towards a pre-1990s model in which international travel is treated less as an individual right and more as a privilege subject to administrative approval,” said Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University.
“Beyond restricting movement, this approach helps keep both people and capital more firmly within the party-state’s sphere of control.”
Premier Li Qiang signed the decree in July and the State Council, headed by Li, said at the time that the regulations standardised procedures for exit and entry and aimed to “safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests”.
The new rules come as Beijing is creating a web of regulations aimed at countering foreign sanctions and competing with the US for technological dominance.
As part of this, it has tightened travel restrictions, especially for civil servants but also for other sectors.
In one of the most prominent recent cases, Xiao Hong, chief executive of AI agentic platform Manus, along with other senior management, received exit bans over the sale of their start-up to US tech group Meta.
The new laws “represent one of the most significant administrative regulations in the field of exit and entry administration” in more than a decade, said law firm DLA Piper.
“Export control violations are now expressly linked to exit bans.”
Article 4 of Regulations of the State Council on Exit and Entry Administration states that if a Chinese citizen “violates export control or technology import and export regulations that may endanger national industrial or technological security”, government departments may “prohibit him or her from leaving the country”.
The rules did not single out the private sector but still gave “the authorities a clearer route to impose exit bans on people working in private companies, including technology executives and researchers”, said Dai Menghao, a trade compliance partner at law firm King & Wood.
“The phrase ‘may endanger’ also gives the authorities considerable discretion.”
Article 10 encourages private sector immigration agencies, a once-thriving business in which brokers help families apply for residency overseas, to report “public officials, military personnel, or other individuals” who are trying to go overseas “in violation of the rules”.
Singapore Management University’s Gao said that even when authorities did not formally prohibit travel, the prospect of rejection could encourage self-censorship and deter individuals from applying to travel in the first place.
While the new rules specified risks or violations that triggered the bans, “the broad wording of the regulation may create a practical chilling effect” on travel, said King and Wood’s Dai.
Managers in charge of permitting trips for employees — government staff in China are often required to surrender their passports to their employers and ask for them back if they plan to travel — will be more reluctant to approve applications.
Consultants offering immigration services are already seeing the impact on their business.
The general manager of a Shanghai immigration company said they were particularly wary of assisting “public sector personnel and employees in technical roles at leading technology companies as well as the family members of these people”.
The authorities were also broadening the definition of public servants to include those working for state schools, research institutes and public hospitals, as well as state-owned enterprises and others, the general manager said.
Spouses and children are also often restricted.
The authorities “are not going to say on paper that no one from the sensitive group . . . is allowed to apply for foreign permanent residence”, said the owner of another immigration firm.
“But there will be so many layers of review that they essentially make such applications impossible.”
Ordinary Chinese people report that they are already often subject to unwritten travel controls.
In the wake of a row with Japan over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment that an attack on Taiwan could force Japan to take military action, some reported difficulty in getting approval for trips there.
“Japan is the new banned destination this year,” said a banker at state-owned Bank of China in Beijing.
Others report receiving telephone calls from people claiming to be immigration authorities telling them not to travel to destinations such as the US.
Zhao, a university lecturer in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou who asked not to be fully identified, said he had bought a return ticket to the US to visit a friend when, just hours before his departure in May last year, he received a call from someone claiming to be from “immigration” urging him not to go.
“They told me the US was not a sensible place to visit.
They said US immigration might check my laptop and phone,” Zhao said.
He said he was puzzled by the warning.
“I’m not a top-secret guy.
I’m not working on anything that I feel could pose a risk to national security.”
Zhao ultimately cancelled the trip, losing about $2,000 because of the short notice.
“I merely wanted to visit a close friend who was about to become a mother,” he said.
“I had no other plans.”
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