China is restricting people from leaving the country, and even U.S. permanent residents or U.S. citizens have been caught by this campaign.
Over the course of 2021, many Chinese netizens shared on social media their difficulties when applying for passports. For those who had the travel documents, during the exit inspections at the airports, officials asked them difficult questions and carefully checked their passports and visas, some netizens recounted. One even said that their passport was torn by the inspector on the spot.
China’s National Immigration Administration (NIA) in July confirmed that the regime was tightening rules around people leaving the country.
At a press conference on July 30, 2021, the NIA, also known as the Exit and Entry Administration said, in an effort to block the coronavirus from overseas, it had implemented a series of strict measures to limit people going abroad: suspend issuing ordinary passports for non-essential, non-urgent affairs; and advising applicants to cancel or postpone travel plans if they are not essential nor urgent.
According to the statistics reported at the conference, the number of ordinary passports issued in the first half of 2021 was only 2 percent of that in the first half of 2019. Most of the passports were issued for purposes of studying, working, and engaging in business activities.
The sudden tightening of the policy disrupted many people’s plans, including Chinese citizens who had settled in America and returned to visit relatives. Netizens on social media said that passport renewal applications submitted six months earlier were not approved, thus making their departures unlikely.
A Chinese businessman living in America, Zhang Shengqi, told Radio Free Asia in August the predicament of his friend. According to Zhang, his friend, who worked at an American college, was stuck in China for a long time. The college employer submitted his application for passport renewal six months earlier but was still waiting for the result. “When he left America, his newborn baby was less than a month old, now the baby was nearly half-a-year old. His wife had to take care of the baby all by herself.”
By Frank Dong
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