cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3597863
The passport collection drive, carried out under what is known as “personal travel abroad management,” allows local government officials to control and monitor who can travel abroad, how often and to where.
It comes as Xi steps up state involvement in everyday life and clamps down on official corruption. China’s powerful state security apparatus has also intensified its campaign against foreign espionage.
Interviews with more than a dozen Chinese public sector workers and notices from education bureaus in half a dozen cities show restrictions on international travel have been greatly expanded from last year to include rank-and-file employees of schools, universities, local governments and state-owned groups.
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“If we want to travel abroad, we have to apply to the city education bureau and I don’t think it will be approved,” said the teacher, asking that they and their city not be named.
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Residents of restive regions such as Tibet lost their freedom to travel more than a decade ago. Starting in the mid-2010s, some areas applied “personal travel abroad management” rules to local teachers. Last year, after pandemic-era travel restrictions were lifted, more education bureaus began to introduce teacher travel restrictions and stepped them up this summer.
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An entry-level salesperson at a bank in Nanjing said she was told to hand in her passport when she joined the state-owned group last year. After quitting in March, she had to wait six months for a “de-secrecy process” before she was able to retrieve it.
In central Hunan province, a mid-level official at a local government investment fund said he gained approval from nine different departments for a holiday abroad but still could not retrieve his passport.
[…]
The restrictions are hitting retirees as well. A 76-year-old who retired from a state-owned aircraft maker more than 10 years ago said his former employer took his passport back this year for “security reasons” and barred him from visiting family abroad.
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China’s foreign ministry said it was not aware of the situation and referred questions to the relevant authorities.
Isn’t this more of a local government thing than a national government thing, as the national government already requires exit visas to leave the country?
If the local government takes your passport, they’re ensuring that you can’t go to the national government and get an exit visa, presumably to protect their labor supply or something.
Too bad the Chinese national government has no control over its local governments, unlike pretty much every other functional nation, isn’t it?
Xi Jinping and his cronies aren’t exactly champions of human rights so I imagine they wouldn’t care either way. They would probably only step in if they were taking passports from party members or there were massive protests like during covid.
The national government is probably not able to do more than a very basic check on would be international travellers. Local government on the other hand is capable to scrutinize individual teachers much more thoroughly.
Ah, makes sense.