As Chinese President Xi Jinping tightens social controls, Chinese authorities are reportedly blocking foreign travel by confiscating the passports of ordinary teachers. This is interpreted as an intention to crack down on teachers who have the greatest influence on students’ education.

According to the Financial Times (FT) on the 6th (local time), the Chinese authorities asked teachers at all general education schools to provide passports.

“All teachers and public sector workers have been ordered to present passports,” said a teacher at a western primary school in Sichuan province, who did not want to be named. “If you want to travel abroad, you have to submit an application to the city education office, but I don’t think it will be approved.”

A teacher from Henan Province also posted on the social media platform Xiaohongshu: “I majored in English and my life’s dream is to visit an English-speaking country.” He added: “But I think this dream will be shattered .”

Since 2003, government officials have been required to provide passports and travel documents, known as “overseas personal travel management,” to crack down on corruption among them. Chinese authorities monitor how often and where officials travel through passport control.

The FT reported that the scope of the “personal overseas travel management” system was significantly expanded this year, after confirming notices from education departments in six cities and interviews with more than a dozen Chinese public sector workers.

Schools in China’s Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hubei and Anhui provinces have also been ordered to provide travel documents for trips abroad. General employees from universities, local governments and state associations were also included in the management.

The Wuhai Education Bureau in the eastern city of Wenzhou, in a teacher travel guide posted on its website in March, required all public kindergartens and primary and secondary school teachers to submit passports and register their names with the Public Security Bureau’s border control department .

Teachers who refuse to present their passports or travel abroad without permission could receive “criticism and clarification” or be investigated by Chinese anti-corruption authorities, depending on the severity of the matter, the statement said. Convicted criminals receive a travel ban for two to five years. Teachers traveling abroad must submit an application to the school. Only one trip within 20 days is permitted per year.

Since the mid-2010s, some parts of China have already applied the “overseas personal travel management” system to general education teachers. However, Chinese authorities appear to have begun extensive controls this summer as more teachers began traveling abroad last year as an overseas travel ban due to the COVID-19 pandemic was lifted.

Chinese authorities, whose primary goal is to strengthen students’ loyalty to the Communist Party, are concerned about teaching teachers when they travel abroad after encountering anti-Communist Party ideas.

According to the guidelines of the Wuhai Education Bureau in Wenzhou City, educators traveling abroad should not come into contact with hostile foreign forces. It also banned contact with forces associated with Falun Gong, which Chinese authorities have defined as a cult and are repressing.

Workers at state-owned companies are also increasingly not receiving passports after presenting them to authorities. This is because Chinese authorities are preventing travel abroad due to concerns about foreign espionage.

“I was instructed to submit my passport as soon as I joined the company last year,” said a new salesman at a bank in Nanjing. “After I left the company in March, I had to wait six months to get my passport back.”

“We have received approval from nine ministries to travel abroad, but we still have not received our passports back,” said a mid-level official who works for an investment fund in central Hunan province. “Nobody told us exactly what we needed to get our passports back.”