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As President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on society, Chinese authorities are asking a growing number of teachers and other public workers to surrender their passports.

The passport collection campaign, carried out as part of the so-called “personal foreign travel management,” allows local government officials to control and monitor who can travel abroad, how often and where.

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This comes as Xi increases the involvement of the state in everyday life and cracks down on official corruption. China’s powerful state security apparatus has also intensified its fight against foreign espionage.

Interviews with more than a dozen Chinese public employees and communications from education offices in half a dozen cities show that restrictions on international travel have been significantly expanded compared to last year to include rank-and-file employees of schools, universities, local governments and government agencies to include. own groups.

“All teachers and public sector workers have been asked to hand over our passports,” said an elementary school teacher in a major city in western Sichuan province.

“If we want to travel abroad, we have to submit an application to the city education office, and I don’t think it will be approved,” the teacher said, asking not to give her name or city.

Teachers in Yichang in the central province of Hubei and another city in neighboring Anhui province told the Financial Times they were also asked to hand over their travel documents. This summer, in the weeks before the start of the school year, educators in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Henan provinces complained on social media about being forced to hand over their travel documents.

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“I studied English, my life’s dream is to visit an English-speaking country, but it feels like this dream will soon be shattered,” a Henan teacher posted on the social media site Xiaohongshu.

The passport collection appears to be based on national regulations from 2003, which introduced a system of travel restrictions for key personnel such as mid- to senior civil servants and allowed local authorities to set rules for the international travel of all public servants.

Residents of restive regions like Tibet lost their freedom to travel more than a decade ago. Beginning in the mid-2010s, some territories applied “personal management of travel abroad” rules to local teachers. Last year, after pandemic-era travel restrictions were lifted, more education departments began imposing travel restrictions on teachers and tightened them this summer.

China’s ruling Communist Party has long placed an emphasis on instilling loyalty in students and has placed teachers’ civic education at the center of that effort. Pre-travel instructions for teachers in the eastern city of Wenzhou suggest local authorities are worried about the ideas they might encounter outside the country.

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Educators traveling abroad are not allowed to have contact with the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong or other “hostile foreign forces,” according to instructions posted by the Ouhai District Education Office in Wenzhou in March along with new travel restrictions for teachers on its website of the district has published.

The district required all public preschool, elementary and secondary school teachers to surrender their passports and said their names would be registered with the Border Control Unit of the Public Security Bureau.

To travel abroad, teachers must apply to their schools and would generally be limited to a single trip of less than 20 days per year, the district’s notice said.

Teachers who refused to surrender their passports or traveled abroad without permission would have to undergo “criticism and clarification” or contact China’s anti-corruption agency, depending on the severity of their case, the statement said. Violators would also be subject to a travel ban for two to five years.

The restrictions on staff at state-owned companies appear to be linked to a growing campaign to combat foreign espionage.

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An entry-level worker at a bank in Nanjing said she was asked to hand over 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 could get it back.

In central Hunan province, a mid-level official at a local government investment fund said he had received approval from nine different authorities to vacation abroad but still could not get his passport back.

“Nobody would tell me what exactly it would take to get my passport back,” he said.

The restrictions also affect pensioners. A 76-year-old who retired from a state-owned aircraft manufacturer more than a decade ago said his former employer revoked his passport this year for “security reasons” and banned him from visiting relatives abroad.

“I have no access to sensitive information and I am a patriot,” he said. “My former employer has no reason to stop me from visiting my grandson.”

China’s Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of the situation and referred questions to relevant authorities. Education offices in Sichuan, Yichang, Anhui, Wenzhou, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Henan did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Tina Hu in Beijing

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd

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