China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced new travel rules that take effect this week, empowering officials to deny passports and restrict exit for citizens who have allegedly harmed the country’s national security or interests while overseas. The measures also target those who violate technology import and export regulations, citing potential threats to industrial and technological security.
Officials say the changes are designed to "safeguard national sovereignty and security" and deny that they limit the travel of ordinary citizens. However, critics argue the rules give Beijing a powerful tool to control the overseas activities of its nationals.
Professor Tom Kellogg, Executive Director of the Centre for Asian Law at Georgetown University, warned that the new provisions could be used to punish dissent, noting that state security authorities sometimes refuse to issue passports to prevent criticism of the government abroad. He likened the expanding controls to the ideological clampdown of the Mao era.
Chinese citizens currently cannot check whether they are subject to exit bans, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not publish a public registry. Many only discover restrictions when applying for passports or attempting to travel.
Data from the rights group Safeguard Defenders shows a dramatic rise in exit bans, from 89 cases in 2016 to over 188,000 last year, with the percentage of civil verdicts involving bans increasing more than 30-fold between 2019 and 2025.
Under the new rules, border officials must also advise nationals against traveling to countries deemed high‑risk. Some civil servants and state‑owned enterprise employees already face travel limits, with managers reminding staff that sensitive destinations such as Japan are off‑limits.
The Ministry has not responded to enquiries from BBC Chinese. The impact of the new regulations on ordinary citizens remains to be seen, but the move signals a tightening of China’s control over its diaspora.
