In most countries around the world, having a passport is considered a basic right for citizens. However, the Chinese Communist authorities have been tightly controlling the passports of Chinese people. Currently, the Chinese government is further tightening restrictions on Chinese citizens traveling abroad, requiring more and more school teachers and government officials to hand over their passports, even demanding that retirees who have been out of work for 10 years surrender their passports.
For a long time, the Chinese authorities have been imposing control on citizens traveling abroad for personal reasons, and now the scope of control is expanding even further. According to a report by the Financial Times on October 6, interviews with over a dozen Chinese government officials and notifications from six city education bureaus indicate that the Chinese authorities have significantly expanded restrictions on international travel since last year, affecting ordinary employees of schools, universities, local governments, and state-owned enterprises.
A primary school teacher in a major city in Sichuan who requested anonymity said, “All teachers and government officials are required to hand over their passports.”
“If we want to travel abroad, we must apply to the city’s education bureau, but I doubt it will be approved,” the teacher said.
Teachers from Yichang City in Hubei Province and a city in Anhui also told the Financial Times that they have been instructed to surrender their travel documents.
During the weeks leading up to the start of the new school year this summer, education workers in Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Henan provinces complained on social media about being forced to hand over their travel documents. A teacher in Henan posted on Xiaohongshu (a popular social media platform): “I majored in English, and my lifelong dream is to visit an English-speaking country, but it feels like that dream is about to be shattered.”
On March 24 this year, the Education Bureau of Ouhai District in Wenzhou City issued new travel restrictions for teachers, requiring all teachers in public kindergartens, primary schools, and middle schools to hand over their passports and register with the border control department of the public security bureau.
Prior to this summer vacation, there were also reports on WeChat groups that a school in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, requested class monitors to compile lists of students holding passports and submit them to the school. In July, He Peirong, a charity worker familiar with the Chinese education industry, told Radio Free Asia that government departments during the summer vacation restrict teachers and students from traveling abroad out of concern that parents may try to send their children to study abroad.
An article in “Han Dong” magazine on February 7, 2019, reported that before the National Day holiday in 2018, the Chinese government extended its travel restrictions for its citizens to the field of education, requiring elementary and middle schools nationwide to collect and take control of teachers’ passports, strengthening management of teachers’ travel abroad.
Employees of state-owned enterprises in China are also restricted from traveling abroad. A junior salesperson at a bank in Nanjing told the Financial Times that when she joined the state-owned group last year, she was required to hand over her passport. After resigning in March, she had to wait for a six-month “declassification process” before she could retrieve her passport.
An executive of a local government investment fund in Hunan Province told the Financial Times that he applied for a vacation abroad and obtained approvals from nine different departments, but still could not retrieve his passport.
The restrictions on traveling abroad also affect retirees. A 76-year-old man who retired over a decade ago from a state-owned aircraft manufacturer told the Financial Times that his former employer took back his passport this year citing “security reasons” and prohibited him from visiting family abroad.
“My former employer has no reason to prevent me from visiting my grandchildren,” he said.