In recent times, the Chinese State Council issued two new economic regulations requiring penalties such as fines, asset freezes, and even criminal liability for foreign companies attempting to shift their operations outside of China, including withdrawing investment partnerships and moving suppliers overseas. This move has caused concern among foreign enterprises operating in China.
The U.S. State Department had previously noted in its 2023 travel advisory for China that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had put in place exit bans for American citizens and citizens of other countries/regions, lacking a fair and transparent legal process and raising concerns of arbitrary enforcement.
“Safeguard Defenders,” a non-profit human rights organization based in Spain dedicated to promoting human rights and rule of law in China and Asia, highlighted in a recent article that the CCP’s actions are a response to efforts by certain countries to disengage from Communist China, escalating risks of external economic sanctions and measures. The CCP’s move clearly intertwines commercial activities with national security concerns.
The article points out that the most worrying aspect is that these two new regulations explicitly allow exit bans to be imposed on foreign individuals suspected of violating the regulations. Over the past decade, the CCP has consistently crafted various regulations, expanding its border control powers over foreign individuals and citizens.
In its publication “Trapped: The Expanding Scope of Chinese Exit Bans” in 2023, “Safeguard Defenders” revealed that within just four years from 2018 to 2022, the CCP introduced four new exit ban laws, bringing the total number of relevant laws to 14. Among them, the “Supervision Law” allows the CCP to impose border control on any individuals under investigation, even if they are not suspects.
These two new regulations further increase the risk of CCP border control over business people in China. The report also unveils instances where individuals only learn of being subject to border control by the CCP upon attempting to leave the country at airports. The durations of exit bans ranging from days to years. Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran was prohibited from leaving China for nearly three years (from 2019 to 2022) due to a civil commercial dispute.
According to data, since the first publication of the CCP’s exit ban report by “Safeguard Defenders” in 2023, there has been a continuous increase in the number of exit bans by the CCP.
While the exact number of CCP exit bans is not publicly disclosed, judgments mentioning “exit restrictions” in the Chinese Supreme Court’s database (China Judgments Online, or CJO) indicate that from 2021 to 2024, the mentions of “exit restrictions” nearly doubled each year.
The article emphasizes that since it takes time for data to be uploaded into the system, it is expected that the data for 2025 is underestimated. Moreover, the numbers do not represent the actual quantity of exit bans issued, but rather the trend changes. The significant growth in CJO data (approximately doubling each year) strongly indicates a rapid increase in the number of CCP exit bans.
Several factors contribute to the likelihood of actual CCP exit bans being higher, such as many exit bans not being included in this database due to being unrelated to judicial procedures; the data only includes judgment outcomes, and many cases related to exit bans may not be recorded as they could be resolved before the court hearing; especially in recent years following the pandemic, more judgment outcomes are not recorded in the CJO database. All of these factors suggest that the upward trend in exit bans may far surpass surface-level data.
The complexity of the data is accentuated by the fact that if cases involve multiple individuals, one record in the CJO database may correspond to multiple exit bans; individuals may appeal, leading to two records in the CJO database possibly referring to the same exit ban, etc.
Additionally, CJO exit ban data covers a range of civil cases such as private lending disputes, company payment disputes, and construction contract disputes. It also includes a few criminal cases and administrative cases.
The article concludes by highlighting that since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has expanded the legal scope of exit bans, increasingly employing them and sometimes even implementing border controls, transnational repression, and other coercion targeting various groups including activists and foreign journalists without legal basis. The CCP’s introduction of these two new regulations is further intensifying concerns among the international community about the CCP’s actions.