China tightens travel restrictions for citizens

China has imposed a range of sweeping new rules restricting travel in and out of the country in a move that observers say will give the government even more control over its citizens.

Citizens deemed to have “harmed” China’s national security or interests while overseas can also be barred from leaving China for up to three years.

But the law also says that it will apply to anyone considered a threat to the country’s industrial or technological security.

China keeps close scrutiny on sectors like semiconductors and AI, as the race between Beijing and Washington for tech dominance heats up. According to reports, travel restrictions were earlier imposed on some executives from these industries.

In March, the co-founders of Manus – an AI company that had been acquired by Meta – were reportedly barred from leaving China.

Under the new rules, border officials are now also required to advise Chinese nationals against travelling to countries and regions deemed “high-risk”.

But even prior to the rules being announced, some people were already restricted from going to certain countries. Civil servants were among the earliest groups subjected to these controls, which later expanded to include state-owned enterprise employees and ordinary citizens.

A retired grassroots civil servant in Anhui told BBC Chinese that around 2018, his workplace made employees surrender their passports. His passport remains in the custody of his former employer even though he retired last year.

According to the ex-civil servant, employees had to apply and explain their reasons for overseas travel, and not all requests were approved.

For example, trips to visit relatives were more likely to be approved than tourism trips, he said.

“It is mainly to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing or transferring assets abroad,” he said. “For more senior officials, it may also be intended to prevent the disclosure of state secrets.”

A man identified by his pseudonym, Xiao Wang, who works at a state-owned financial institution in Beijing, told BBC Chinese that his fellow employees have long been required to surrender their passports and get approval for overseas travel.

The 32-year-old said managers have verbally reminded staff that “sensitive countries such as Japan are definitely off-limits”.

Professor Tom Kellogg, Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, told BBC Chinese that the expanding travel restrictions were “deeply concerning” and said they reflect a “growing ideological control under Chinese leader Xi Jinping”, which is reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s era.

China was largely cut off from the world under Mao’s decades-long regime, and international travel only became a part of life for Chinese people in the 1990s, after China underwent a series of reforms and opening up.

Today’s various travel restrictions, Kellogg said, “bring back memories of that painful era”.

Piyao, a Chinese government “rumour-refuting” platform, posted a statement last week saying the new rules “do not restrict the travel of ordinary citizens, but rather serve as a preventative measure against high-risk destinations and individuals with unusual travel patterns”.

The regulations were issued to address “problems” such as people being deceived into leaving the country or engaging in illegal gambling and scam activities abroad, the statement said.

According to publicly available information, Chinese citizens currently cannot check whether they are subject to exit controls on their own.

Unless official written or verbal notification is issued, people generally only discover they are restricted from leaving when applying for documents or attempting to depart.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and immigration authorities did not respond to enquiries from BBC Chinese.

Chinese authorities have drastically stepped up exit bans on its citizens in recent years, according to data provided to the BBC from rights group Safeguard Defenders.

China’s supreme court database showed only 89 records mentioning exit bans in 2016, but that figure had risen to 188,760 last year.

The percentage of civil verdicts that dealt with exit bans also surged more than 30 times between 2019 and 2025, from around 0.23% to 7.3%. The actual volume of such cases is believed to be even higher, owing to an increasing number of withheld judgments.

The rules could also affect citizens who work in areas such as human rights, say analysts.

“This is another tool designed to control what Chinese citizens do and say overseas,” said Professor Kellogg.

“In some cases, in order to prevent individuals from criticising the Chinese government overseas or to punish their rights advocacy activities, state security authorities directly refuse to issue passports.”

One 26-year-old Chinese citizen, who wished to be identified only as Pipi, told BBC Chinesethat his passport application in 2023 was rejected and he believes it was because he attended the massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

According to Pipi, he was interviewed by Hong Kong media outlets during the protests. When he returned to mainland China, he was questioned by state security police.

He said one immigration official told him that he could not get a passport “because of the Hong Kong issue” – but this was not confirmed in writing to him.

“I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to leave [China],” he said.