China is preventing tens of thousands of people from leaving the country, new report shows

Australians are among the tens of thousands of people who have been banned from leaving China "sometimes outside legal justification," according to a new report.

Between 2016 and 2020, there was an eightfold-increase in the number of cases where exit bans were mentioned in the Chinese Supreme Court's legal database, the report said. Source: Getty

Key Points

• China is increasingly barring people from leaving the country.
• A new report cites the cases of Australian journalists Bill Birtles and Michael Smith who were hit with exit bans.
• Attention on the exit bans comes as China-US tensions have risen over trade and security disputes.

China is increasingly barring people from leaving the country, including Australian journalists, a jarring message as the authorities say the country is open for business after three years of tight COVID-19 restrictions.

Scores of Chinese and foreigners have been ensnared by exit bans, according to a new report by the rights group Safeguard Defenders, while a Reuters analysis has found an apparent surge of court cases involving such bans in recent years, and foreign business lobbies are voicing concern about the trend.

"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 reads.

"Between 2018 and July of this year, no less than five new or amended (Chinese) laws provide for the use of exit bans, for a total today of 15 laws," said Laura Harth, the group's campaign director.

The group estimates "tens of thousands" of Chinese are banned from exit at any one time. It also cites a 2022 academic paper by Chris Carr and Jack Wroldsen that found 128 cases of foreigners being exit-banned between 1995 and 2019, including 18 Australians, 29 Americans and 44 Canadians.

The report refers to the 2018 case of Australian journalist Matthew Carney of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) who fled China, fearful he would be placed under an exit ban.

He had been warned by a Chinese official that his coverage violated Chinese law and when he later tried to renew his journalist visa, he was again accused of making trouble with his reporting and then of violating visa regulations.

In 2020 the ABC’s Bill Birtles and Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith were banned from leaving China for several weeks in a case that involved a tense diplomatic standoff between Beijing and Canberra.

Both men were told they were “persons of interest in a case” that involved disappeared Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei.

Attention on the exit bans comes as China-US tensions have risen over trade and security disputes. This contrasts with China's message that it is opening up to overseas investment and travel, emerging from the isolation of some of the world's tightest COVID curbs.

The Reuters analysis of records on exit bans, from China's Supreme Court database, shows an eight-fold increase in cases mentioning bans between 2016 and 2022.

China last week beefed up its counter-espionage law, allowing exit bans to be imposed on anyone, Chinese or foreign, who is under investigation.

Most of the cases in the database referring to exit bans are civil, not criminal. Reuters did not find any involving foreigners or politically sensitive subversion or national security issues.

By comparison, the US and European Union impose travel bans on some criminal suspects but generally not for civil claims.

China'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.

Foreign businesses are concerned about the heightened scrutiny and the vague wording of the counter-espionage legislation, which says exit bans can be imposed on those who cause "harm to the national security or significant damage to national interests".

"The uncertainty is huge," said Jorg Wuttke, head of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. "Can you do due diligence? Clarity has to come."

The EU chamber told Reuters in a statement: "At a time when China is proactively trying to restore business confidence to attract foreign investment, the exit bans send a very mixed signal."

People barred from leaving China include regular Chinese embroiled in financial disputes as well as rights defenders, activists and lawyers, and ethnic minorities such as Uyghurs in China's northwestern Xinjiang region, according to the Safeguard Defenders report.

It cites a Chinese judicial report saying 34,000 people were placed under exit bans between 2016 and 2018 for owing money, a 55 per cent rise from the same period three years earlier.