China demands schoolteachers hand in their passports
financialpost.comChinese authorities are demanding that a growing number of schoolteachers and other public sector employees hand in their passports as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on society.
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.
“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.
“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.
Teachers in Yichang in the central province of Hubei and in another city in neighbouring Anhui province told the Financial Times they had also been told to hand in their travel documents. This summer, in the weeks ahead of the school year start, educators in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Henan provinces complained on social media of being forced to hand in their travel documents.
“I was an English major, my life-long dream is to visit an English-speaking country, but it feels like that is about to be
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