As Beijing prepares to enforce a new nationwide exit-entry regulation on September 15, 2026, reports of Chinese citizens being stopped at ports of exit have multiplied. Many learn only when applying for a passport or clearing border inspection that they have already been placed on a departure blacklist.
The Epoch Times says it obtained a 2017 classified Xinjiang public-security document, Ili Prefecture Public Security Organs “Anti-Return Flow” Work Handbook (2017). The handbook describes a vertical system: the Xinjiang Public Security Department first drew 35 “red lines” for people barred from leaving, then Ili local police added 17 more target groups focused on people coming back. Together they form a 52-category control net.
The new State Council Regulations on Exit and Entry Administration (Order No. 841), adopted June 29, 2026 and signed by Premier Li Qiang, take effect on September 15. Official text frames the rules as standardizing border administration and protecting “national sovereignty, security, and development interests.” Separate analyses of the regulation note expanded grounds to refuse travel documents, impose exit bans, and scrutinize travelers at the border, including for conduct deemed harmful to national security and for export-control or technology-security concerns.
What the 2017 handbook shows is how those national-security labels were already being operationalized—at least in Xinjiang—far beyond convicted terrorists.
Top-Level Red Lines: Xinjiang’s 35 Exit-Restricted Categories
The handbook first lists 17 categories designated by the Xinjiang Public Security Department, then 18 “newly added” categories. Combined, they are 35 exit red lines.
The original 17 include:
- Key personnel and special groups (state-security key persons; anti-subversion work; Protestant and Catholic work; cult-related key persons).
- People released after criminal sentences for endangering state security—including those whose state-security conduct was prosecuted as ordinary crime.
- Leaders, core members, and rank-and-file of the domestic “three forces” (terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism), plus immediate family (parents, spouse, children, siblings) and principal associates.
- People involved in ongoing state-security investigations and their important associates.
- Fugitives and their principal associates.
- People tied to previously broken violent-terror, religious-extremist, or separatist cases who were not prosecuted or were excused because of “legal or policy factors.”
- People punished criminally, or administratively detained 10 days or more, for “three illegal activities”: illegal religious activity, illegal propaganda materials, and illegal online religious dissemination.
- People who suddenly sell off family property or means of livelihood without a “proper reason” and leave as a household, or who were intercepted or repatriated after attempted “Yijilate” (Hijrah-style) exit.
- Immediate family in China of people who exited via “Yijilate.”
- Immediate family and important associates in China of overseas “three forces” leaders and core members.
- Immediate family in China of people who applied for political asylum abroad.
- People for whom there is evidence of collusion with overseas hostile organizations or persons in subversion or other activity harming state security and political stability.
- People for whom there is evidence of collusion with overseas non-governmental political actors in infiltration.
- People for whom there is evidence of collusion with overseas Protestant or Catholic organizations in illegal Christian activity inside China.
- Ten types of terror-related targets named in the “Autumn Wind” crackdown, including alleged ETIM contacts, people suspected of training abroad and “flowing back,” online wanted persons, alleged attack planners, people accused of spreading extremist material or vowing “jihad,” fundraisers and recruiters, suspected “Yijilate” participants, people with “extremist” appearance or belongings, close contacts of extremists, and unsentenced members of broken state-security groups.
- People sent to county- or township-level “concentrated education and transformation” classes for suspected state-security activity who, after “graduation,” were still judged extreme or abnormal in behavior.
- Other state-security targets whose exit is said to endanger national security or cause major harm to national interests.
Comments