Why China is asking school teachers to hand in their passports

Chinese President Xi Jinping is further tightening his grip on society.

Authorities have ordered a passport recall among a growing number of teachers at state-run schools and other public sector employees.

The fresh bans are the latest in a slew of travel restrictions during the three years of COVID-19 restrictions on Chinese citizens.

Let’s take a closer look.

The passport recall drive

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.

“All teachers and public sector employees were told to hand in our passports,” said a primary school teacher in a major city in the western province of Sichuan told The Financial Times, adding, “If we want to travel aboard, we have to apply to the city education bureau and I don’t think it will be approved,” said the teacher.

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These teachers spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

Teachers in the nearby province of Anhui and the central province of Hubei, Yichang, told the outlet that they had also been instructed to turn in their passports.

Institutions in Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Henan provinces expressed dissatisfaction on social media about the latest move.

“I was an English major, and my life-long dream is to visit an English-speaking country, but it feels like that is about to be shattered,” posted one Henan teacher to social media site Xiaohongshu.

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Wenzhou’s pre-travel guidelines for educators reveal that the government is worried about the viewpoints they might meet abroad.

Educators travelling abroad must not have contact with the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement or other “hostile foreign forces,” according to instructions published by Wenzhou’s Ouhai district education bureau in March on the district’s website along with the new teach travel restrictions.

The rules restricting foreign travel have been publicly posted on the websites of several universities and educational institutions across China.

Faculty at the computer science department of Wuhan University must hand over any passports within seven days of receiving them to university authorities “for safekeeping,” according to a notice dated April 2023.

At Zhejiang’s Taizhou University, faculty and staff wishing to travel overseas for personal reasons must obtain approval from the personnel department, according to a notice dated October 2019.

A similar notice on the Shanghai University of Sport’s website was seen.

The approval process

To travel aboard, teachers must file applications with their schools and would generally be restricted to a single trip of less than 20 days each year, Wenzhou’s district notice said.

A Wuhan resident who has family connections in the education industry told Radio Free Asia (RFA) Mandarin that visiting Hong Kong requires multiple approval processes and reporting to the education office of the local government.

“The school has to approve it first, then the district education bureau, and finally it’s sent to the municipal education bureau, which must approve it before you can leave China,” she said, adding, “Some teachers may now be prevented from taking their kids overseas during summer vacation.”

Veteran rights activist and former teacher He Peirong, who now lives overseas, said the restrictions seem aimed at parents looking to send their children overseas to study as a first step towards emigration by the whole family.

“Sending their children overseas to study is the first step towards emigration. It’s a very safe way to transfer assets, and to eventually emigrate,” he said.

Meanwhile, teachers who refuse to hand in their passports or who travel abroad without permission would be subject to “criticism and education” or referred to China’s anti-corruption authority, depending on the severity of their case, according to the notice.

Offenders would also be barred from travel for two to five years.

Not limited to teachers

Well, the travel restrictions extend to more than just teachers.

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. “No one would tell me what exactly was needed to get my passport back,” he told The Financial Times.

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.

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

Mapping connections

Chinese authorities are also scrutinising personal foreign ties, according to a report by Reuters.

Starting in 2022, residents received questionnaires from bodies such as the Communist Youth League, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC), local authorities, and their respective employers.

The forms asked for information on relatives with foreign nationality or overseas permanent residence, and details of foreign assistance or experience, the report said, adding that it was the first time they had received the requests.

The reason

The push to recall passports seems to be based on national legislation from 2003 that set up a travel restriction system for important persons, including officials at mid- to high-level positions.

The curbs have been widened since 2021 to include bans on overseas travel, tighter limits on trips’ frequency and duration, onerous approval processes, and pre-departure confidentiality training. These measures were unrelated to COVID-19.

The restrictions on staff at state-owned enterprises appear to be connected to a growing campaign to root out foreign espionage.

Neil Thomas, a fellow of Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis in Washington, told _Reuters, “_Beijing is increasingly paranoid about the threat of espionage by Western countries, and preventing government employees from going abroad could be a way to reduce opportunities for spying by foreign powers.”

He added that the travel curbs in particular would have implications for China’s interactions with the world. “The less Chinese officials go abroad, the less they’re able to learn from good things that foreign governments are doing, the less they are familiar with foreign societies, and the less they understand how China is truly perceived in the world.”

China’s foreign ministry said that it was not aware of the situation and referred questions to the relevant authorities, according to the Financial Times.

Xi’s administration has long issued travel bans to rights activists, dissidents, human rights lawyers and their families.

Similar policies are also implemented in Tibet and Xinjiang in the wake of mass protests and uprisings by disgruntled ethnic minority populations in 2008 and 2009.

Despite these restrictions and bans, hundreds of thousands of people have managed to leave China to start a new life overseas since the pandemic restrictions. This has been dubbed the “run” movement.

With inputs from agencies