cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3597863
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.
It comes as Xi steps up state involvement in everyday life and clamps down on official corruption. China’s powerful state security apparatus has also intensified its campaign against foreign espionage.
Interviews with more than a dozen Chinese public sector workers and notices from education bureaus in half a dozen cities show restrictions on international travel have been greatly expanded from last year to include rank-and-file employees of schools, universities, local governments and state-owned groups.
[…]
“If we want to travel abroad, we have to apply to the city education bureau and I don’t think it will be approved,” said the teacher, asking that they and their city not be named.
[…]
Residents of restive regions such as Tibet lost their freedom to travel more than a decade ago. Starting in the mid-2010s, some areas applied “personal travel abroad management” rules to local teachers. Last year, after pandemic-era travel restrictions were lifted, more education bureaus began to introduce teacher travel restrictions and stepped them up this summer.
[…]
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.
[…]
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.
[…]
China’s foreign ministry said it was not aware of the situation and referred questions to the relevant authorities.
lemmy.ml: But how dare you call China an open-air prison!!!
This is gonna be a tough one for the tankies to defend…
They will probably just ignore the post completely.
lemmy.ml: autistic screeching
You have been permanently banned from lemmy.ml
Promise?
Can you throw in a /latestagecapitalism ban too?
No it won’t, they legitimately believe that the only thing in the world which matters is blindly opposing US hegemony. Absolutely anything is justified to this end, and in the grand scheme of things this is a pretty mild “anything.”
Remember, these are people who actually defend China’s broad censorship of daily life, media and the internet, because freedom of expression is freedom to entertain western values and that is the worst thing a person can possibly do.
I was just thinking that hexbear will somehow spin this into being a positive.
China’s ruling Communist party has long prioritised instilling loyalty in students and has made the political education of teachers central to those efforts. Pre-travel instructions for teachers in the eastern city of Wenzhou indicates local authorities are concerned about the ideas they would encounter outside the country.
I want to go back to Hong Kong so badly, and then I keep seeing shit like this which reminds me I never want to visit China.
Not a huge city lover because I find a lot of them very samey but New York and Hong Kong are incredible places.
Last time I was there was before COVID and I wonder how much of it’s vibrance has been sucked out since. 40 minutes north, Shenzhen is drab and lifeless by comparison.
Funny enough, I’m the opposite. You’ve seen a few different countrysides you’ve seen them all. But cities are bustling, vibrant and unique with all different cultures coming together, and Hong Kong (like you said about New York) was at the top of them. I’m really disappointed about how you describe Shenzhen because that’s my worry that will happen to Hong Kong
Yeah I can see that perspective. It depends a lot on the city I suppose.
You gave me pause for thought and I suppose I just like being in nature more. :)
Oh, Berlin and Amsterdam are also stand out cities. Yeah maybe I like them more than I think I do.
More reasons to never live in China.
It’s been that way since 3 or 4 years ago. The way it works is that you’ll hand in the passport and if you want to use it, you’d have to apply for it. The party branch (党委) usually has quotas for each year and therefore will seek excuses to reject the application.
I think it has been like this for close to a decade at this point…
It really is like that. I found a report on People.cn from 2015. I guess it’s just the impact range is expanding. Personally I only heard of people experiencing this post-covid.
Why would they have that degree of bureaucracy? Why not just deny pp applications from the outset?
For people not in public sectors, application for passports are okay-ish.
For others, I can only speculate. Most of the public sector workers already have passports from years ago. I don’t know if they have any kind of restrictions on new applications. To me, the Immigration Administration of the Ministry of Public Safety (who issues passports) feels more like a “routine” type of branch of the central government, but I could be wrong.
Fuckin yikes
Holy shit
Seems like preparations for war
Cultural révolution pt 2?
It’s hard to understand the absoluteness of the stranglehold that the government has there without visiting. Cameras everywhere tracking everything. Little police booths everywhere to remind you. Even inter-city travel by high speed train requires an ID check. You cannot own your own car in the larger cities without a car license that you must apply for annually. All messaging apps are unencrypted and monitored. etc etc
Do they pretend that it benefits them somehow?
What a shit hole.
Total joke of a government
This is obviously very concerning and unfortunate for the people affected by this. What I dont understand though, is why they have to collect the physical passport and not just put them on a no country exit list?
The illusion of living in a “definitely-not-fascist-dictatorship”.
“Shucks, you know I simply cannot remember where I left it.”
you can think about it in a cold prison cell
How’s that communism going, guys?
Like nearly every other “communist” regime that has existed in modern history, this is actually fascism pretending to be communism. Communism means the people hold power, here we have a single individual and his lackey’s holding all the power. That’s fascism.
Interestingly enough, it’s not the ideals of communism that are the problem. Doing things by and for the people is good.
It’s the feasibility of communism that is the problem. “Fascism pretending to be communism” is the problem. Communism is easily hacked.
That’s not to say capitalism is great - it fails because it lacks ideals.
Right. It only takes one or a very few people to forcibly centralize power. It takes effort by an overwhelming majority working together to spread it out.
The majority will act, in time. But it acts as a surge of repressed feeling. Once spent, it loses focus.
Any real, functional system must incorporate the standing focus that authoritarian systems hold, but have capacity to be utilized by the people to enact their will.
Typical coward fearing the people will forget about him (they will, some already have).
Hey Xi, kill yourself ❤️
