cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/59066615
China has imposed a range of sweeping new rules restricting travel in and out of the country in a move that observers say will give the government even more control over its citizens.
Citizens deemed to have “harmed” China’s national security or interests while overseas can also be barred from leaving China for up to three years.
But the law also says that it will apply to anyone considered a threat to the country’s industrial or technological security.
[…]
Under the new rules, border officials are now also required to advise Chinese nationals against travelling to countries and regions deemed “high-risk”.
[…]
But even prior to the rules being announced, some people were already restricted from going to certain countries. Civil servants were among the earliest groups subjected to these controls, which later expanded to include state-owned enterprise employees and ordinary citizens.
A retired grassroots civil servant in Anhui told BBC Chinese that around 2018, his workplace made employees surrender their passports. His passport remains in the custody of his former employer even though he retired last year.
According to the ex-civil servant, employees had to apply and explain their reasons for overseas travel, and not all requests were approved.
For example, trips to visit relatives were more likely to be approved than tourism trips, he said.
“It is mainly to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing or transferring assets abroad,” he said. “For more senior officials, it may also be intended to prevent the disclosure of state secrets.”
[…]
A man identified by his pseudonym, Xiao Wang, who works at a state-owned financial institution in Beijing, told BBC Chinese that his fellow employees have long been required to surrender their passports and get approval for overseas travel.
The 32-year-old said managers have verbally reminded staff that “sensitive countries such as Japan are definitely off-limits”.
[…]
The rules could also affect citizens who work in areas such as human rights, say analysts.
“This is another tool designed to control what Chinese citizens do and say overseas,” said Professor Tom Kellogg, Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University.
“In some cases, in order to prevent individuals from criticising the Chinese government overseas or to punish their rights advocacy activities, state security authorities directly refuse to issue passports.”
One 26-year-old Chinese citizen, who wished to be identified only as Pipi, told BBC Chinese that his passport application in 2023 was rejected and he believes it was because he attended the massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.
According to Pipi, he was interviewed by Hong Kong media outlets during the protests. When he returned to mainland China, he was questioned by state security police.
He said one immigration official told him that he could not get a passport “because of the Hong Kong issue” – but this was not confirmed in writing to him.
“I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to leave [China],” he said.
[…]
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml
Have you now found a fabricated data pretending that “wages for working people have skyrocketed” in China? The most important thing in your comment is that you share an image, but not the link.
To help you out:
Between the 1980s and to the mid-2020s,
In the same period,
China’s richest 10% now own almost 70% of the countries wealth, and they earn 44% of the income.
Inequality levels in China are equal to those in the United States in the meantime.
In European countries and other democracies like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the inequality is much lower.
You can look up the data here.
The situation in China gets worse, as the county’s gig economy nears half the workforce while worker protections lag behind. There is ample evidence for that.
You are confusing a chart of real wage growth with share of overall wealth. The data I provided is easily backed up by the World Inequality Report in 2018. China’s capitalist class has risen in terms of total wealth more rapidly, thus a rising inequality since 1980, but this has come alongside the single most rapid improvement in the lives of the working classes in history thanks to China’s absolute rise, alongside successful poverty eradication campaigns.
The growth of wealth inequality is the tradeoff for this rapid development. Had China not adopted marketization in secondary and developing industries, growth likely would have remained high but unstable, as it was until Reform & Opening Up:
Rather than the slightly more accelerated and far more stable growth afterwards:
Comparing wealth inequality of a developing socialist country to developed imperialist powers like European states, and genocidal settler-colonial projects like Canada, New Zealand, and Australia is dishonest. All of those countries depend on the exploitation of the global south, as well as the displacement and genocide of native peoples in the settler-colonies. Internally, wealth inequality in imperialist countries is lower, but when we actually view the totality of the imperialist system we can see the actual immiseration of the global south that keeps western economies flowing. China does not run on imperialism, finance capital is thoroughly state controlled and kept out of the hands of the capitalist class.
It is intensely dishonest to frame me as a liar for demonstrating the actual rapid development in living conditions and real wages of the Chinese working classes, and pretend I was talking about wealth inequality decreasing. These are entirely separate phenomena, yet your conclusion that China is getting worse relies on you substituting my point on wage growth with your point on inequality. Even if inequality is increasing temporarily, it is only increasing in the context of rapidly improving conditions for the working classes, which is the actual point I was bringing to the table.
Terrible propaganda on your part that anyone can see through.