“Because of rising tensions between the US and China, the salience of this risk has risen,” said Lester Ross, a veteran lawyer in China who has handled exit ban cases. The foreign ministry said at the time Mintz was suspected of engaging in unlawful business operations. Mintz said in late March that authorities had raided the firm’s China office and detained five local staff. The company, the executive and China’s public security bureau did not respond to requests for comment. One person prevented from leaving China this year is a Singaporean executive at the US due-diligence firm Mintz Group, according to three people familiar with the matter. By comparison, the US and EU impose travel bans on some criminal suspects but generally not for civil claims.Ĭhina’s ministry of public security did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on exit bans, including inquiries on how many individuals, including foreigners, are subject to them. Reuters did not find any involving foreigners or politically sensitive subversion or national security issues. Most of the cases in the database referring to exit bans are civil, not criminal. The Reuters analysis of records on exit bans, from China’s supreme court database, shows an eightfold increase in cases mentioning bans between 20.Ĭhina last week beefed up its counter-espionage law, allowing exit bans to be imposed on anyone, Chinese or foreign, who is under investigation. It also cites a 2022 academic paper that found 128 cases of foreigners being exit-banned between 19, including 29 Americans and 44 Canadians.įocus on the exit bans comes as China-US tensions have risen over trade and security disputes and contrasts with China’s message that it is opening up to overseas investment and travel after the isolation of its Covid curbs. The group estimates “tens of thousands” of Chinese citizens are banned from leaving at any one time. “Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China has expanded the legal landscape for exit bans and increasingly used them, sometimes outside legal justification,” the Safeguard Defenders report says.
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