Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
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.
The group estimates “tens of thousands” of Chinese are banned from exit at any one time. It also cites a 2022 academic paper by Chris Carr and Jack Wroldsen that found 128 cases of foreigners being exit-banned between 1995 and 2019, including 29 Americans and 44 Canadians.
Attention to the exit bans comes as China-U.S. 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 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 2022.
China last week beefed up its counter-espionage 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 U.S. and European Union imposed travel bans on some criminal suspects but generally not for civil claims.
