Business Travel to China from 15 September: The Exit Ban Is Not About You

Hello, this is Ryuta Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.

I wrote recently about China's new exit and entry regulations, State Council Order No. 841, effective 15 September. That piece read them from an export control angle.

After it went out, a colleague raised a different one. "Doesn't this affect the people we send to China?" It does. But when I went back to the text, I found this is a story shaped to be misunderstood. Left alone, it turns into "from 15 September your people might not be able to leave China."

Let me get the conclusion out first. That is wrong.

Starting with the misunderstanding

The exit restriction sits in Article 4, and it opens like this:

中国公民有下列情形之一的，不准出境¹

Chinese citizens. The third paragraph of that article, the one triggered by violations of export control or technology import-export administration, has the same subject. Nowhere in the nineteen articles of Order No. 841 is there a provision restricting the exit of foreign nationals. I checked the version published by the Ministry of Commerce, the full text released by Xinhua and the version carried by People's Daily against each other¹.

So there is no sense in which 15 September makes it newly possible to stop a Japanese or other foreign traveller from leaving. What the Order newly enables, in terms of stopping people, concerns Chinese citizens. The case of a Chinese national engineer being unable to travel is covered in reading Order No. 841 from an export control angle.

Does that mean travellers are unaffected? No. The part that reaches them is on the other side: entry.

What Order No. 841 does to foreign nationals

Two provisions matter.

The first is Article 5, in three paragraphs. The first reads:

外国人在境外申请办理中国签证或者在口岸申请入境时提供虚假材料、作出虚假陈述的，移民管理机构、签证机关可以决定1年至5年以内不准其入境。¹

Where a foreign national submits false materials or makes false statements when applying for a Chinese visa abroad, or when applying for entry at a port, the immigration and visa authorities may impose an entry ban of one to five years.

I suspect this is handled loosely in most companies. Purpose of travel, places to be visited, employment history. Plenty of organisations leave the form to a travel agency or a local fixer and never have the traveller check the final version. "Roughly right" on a form now sits upstream of a potential five-year exclusion. That is not a criticism of the people doing the paperwork. Working at that level of precision has been normal.

The second paragraph covers criminal punishment for obstructing border administration, or administrative punishment for fraudulently obtaining travel documents or unlawful entry and exit, with the same one-to-five year ban running from completion of the punishment¹.

The third paragraph is the genuinely new part:

外国人被列入反制清单、不可靠实体清单、恶意实体清单或者被采取反制和限制措施等，需要依法采取不予签发出境入境证件或者不准入境等相关措施的，由移民管理机构、签证机关按照职责实施。¹

Where a foreign national is placed on a countermeasure list, the unreliable entity list or a malicious entity list, or is made subject to countermeasures and restrictive measures, and visa refusal or entry denial needs to be applied, the immigration and visa authorities implement it as part of their duties. Lists and the border desk are now connected in the text.

The other provision is Article 3. It requires the stated reason for entry, exit, stay or residence to be genuine and lawful, and provides that when verifying identity and stated purpose the authorities may ask questions and require the person to produce documents, materials and 电子数据 — electronic data — and other information¹. Having electronic data named explicitly is not a small thing for anyone crossing a border with a laptop. I wrote about devices and data handling in the Counter-Espionage Law and the National Intelligence Law, so I will not repeat it here.

Article 8, separately, does not permit foreign enterprises and organisations to provide exit and entry intermediary services inside China, and agencies already doing so before the effective date must file within 90 days of it². Worth knowing who handles your local arrangements.

If you also want to check whether technical information travels with your people, the free export control readiness check will show you where you stand.

The exit ban has been on the books for thirteen years

Can a foreign national be barred from leaving China? Yes. Just not under Order No. 841.

The provision is Article 28 of the Exit and Entry Administration Law, adopted on 30 June 2012 by the 27th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress and in force since 1 July 2013³. Thirteen years old.

第二十八条 外国人有下列情形之一的，不准出境： （一）被判处刑罚尚未执行完毕或者属于刑事案件被告人、犯罪嫌疑人的… （二）有未了结的民事案件，人民法院决定不准出境的； （三）拖欠劳动者的劳动报酬，经国务院有关部门或者省、自治区、直辖市人民政府决定不准出境的； （四）法律、行政法规规定不准出境的其他情形。³

The one I would watch is (2). An unresolved civil case where a people's court decides to bar exit. Not a criminal matter. A contract dispute with a counterparty, unpaid invoices, an argument over unwinding a joint venture. If that is live and your person is on the ground when the other side applies for preservation measures, exit can stop.

The awkward part is that once it happens, your options are thin. The bar stays until the dispute resolves or the decision is lifted. How you support someone stranded, what you tell their family, how you rebuild a chain of command. Not the kind of problem to start thinking about on the day.

Which is why the control has to sit before departure. Legal keeps a list of matters in dispute with Chinese counterparties, and any travel request from someone involved in one of those matters gets held for a check. That is the whole mechanism. If you already track matters, it starts as one extra field on the travel request form asking whether the traveller is involved in a dispute with a Chinese counterparty.

Confusing this with Order No. 841 sends the response in the wrong direction. Reading the Order closely does nothing about Article 28. Conversely, linking live disputes to travel approval is something you can build now, without waiting for September.

When the company is listed, it reaches the individual

One more layer. Article 10 of the Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List (MOFCOM Order No. 4 of 2020, in force 19 September 2020) sets out the measures available against a listed foreign entity, and includes these:

（三）限制或者禁止其相关人员、交通运输工具等入境 （四）限制或者取消其相关人员在中国境内工作许可、停留或者居留资格⁴

Restricting or prohibiting the entry of its relevant personnel and means of transport; restricting or revoking their work permits, stay or residence status in China. The entity is listed, but the measures reach people. Article 5(3) of Order No. 841 reads as putting the resulting visa refusals and entry denials into the hands of the immigration and visa authorities as a matter of duty.

One thing to state plainly. Being on a list does not mean the company did anything wrong. It is a regulatory designation, not a judgement on the company, and legitimate civilian businesses do get caught by broad categories.

Also, the "control list" and "watch list" on which Japanese companies were placed by the Chinese measures of 2026 belong to the export control framework and are a different instrument from the unreliable entity list discussed here. Conflating them produces a false picture of the companies named. The measures themselves are covered, from primary sources, in the expert panel on economic security.

Before, during, after

Making this operational.

Before. Have the traveller check the visa application themselves: purpose, places to be visited, employment history. Do not file the agency's draft unread. That is where Article 5(1) bites. Have legal confirm there is no live civil dispute with a Chinese counterparty on the matters this person handles, which is how you address Article 28(2). Send a travel-only device carrying the minimum data needed. With Article 3 naming electronic data explicitly, designing for the request rather than hoping it does not come is the straightforward reading.

During. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published spot information that is unusually specific here. "Alert relating to China's Counter-Espionage Law," issued 22 July 2025, is still posted as current⁵. Entering or photographing military restricted and military administrative zones; unauthorised land surveys; GPS surveying, geological work such as hot spring drilling, ecological surveys and archaeological surveys; unauthorised statistical surveys by foreign nationals. It states that even distributing an academic questionnaire can fall foul of the Statistics Law⁵. The line I found heaviest is this one:

Conduct of the above kinds may be investigated not only where it is recent, during the current stay in China, but also where it is past conduct, during earlier stays in China or conduct outside China⁵

Not doing anything on this trip is not the test.

After. Plan later travel on the assumption that records generated locally can be consolidated. On what gets recorded, I worked through the reported cases using only the confirmed facts in reading the foreign personnel platform reporting.

What changes on 15 September, and what does not

Entry changes. Under Article 5 of Order No. 841, false materials or statements in a visa application or at entry, and punishment for obstructing border administration and related offences, each carry an entry ban of one to five years. List placement and countermeasures are now connected in the text to the visa and border desks. Article 3 makes the demand for electronic data explicit.

Exit does not. The exit restriction in Order No. 841 applies to Chinese citizens, and the Order has no provision restricting the exit of foreign nationals. The basis on which a foreign traveller can be barred from leaving is Article 28 of the Exit and Entry Administration Law, in force since 2013.

Keeping those apart keeps the response in the right order. The entry side is about how visa applications are actually filled in, and the team that handles travel arrangements can start this week. The exit side is about linking live disputes to travel approval, and that is legal's job. Different owners. Compress it all into "travel to China is risky" and neither of them moves.

What nags at me is that changes like this rarely reach the desk where the forms are filled in. Your export control team can read Order No. 841 closely and it still will not reach the person typing the visa application, if that person sits in another department. For this one, working out who actually writes the form may be the single most effective place to start.

If you want to review your programme, including technical information handling and counterparty screening, TRAFEED may be a useful reference point, and you can bring a specific situation to us here.

---

Footnotes

1. Regulations of the State Council on Exit and Entry Administration (State Council Order No. 841). Adopted at the 90th executive meeting of the State Council on 29 June 2026, signed by Premier Li Qiang and issued 22 July 2026, effective 15 September 2026, 19 articles. Article 4 sets out grounds for barring exit and applies to Chinese citizens. Article 5(1) reads: 「外国人在境外申请办理中国签证或者在口岸申请入境时提供虚假材料、作出虚假陈述的，移民管理机构、签证机关可以决定1年至5年以内不准其入境。」 Article 5(2) provides a one-to-five year entry ban from completion of punishment for criminal punishment for obstructing border administration or administrative punishment for fraudulently obtaining travel documents or unlawful exit and entry. Article 5(3) reads: 「外国人被列入反制清单、不可靠实体清单、恶意实体清单或者被采取反制和限制措施等，需要依法采取不予签发出境入境证件或者不准入境等相关措施的，由移民管理机构、签证机关按照职责实施。」 Article 3 provides that the stated reason must be genuine and lawful and that the authorities may 「询问相关情况，要求其出示、提供有关文件、资料、电子数据等信息」. Article 8 does not permit foreign enterprises and organisations to provide exit and entry intermediary services within China. The Order contains no provision restricting the exit of foreign nationals. Ministry of Commerce text: https://fec.mofcom.gov.cn/article/ggfw/crjfw/crjzcwj/202607/7209.html — full text via Xinhua: https://www.news.cn/20260731/08228229f320402fb3a97a095abfd1ad/c.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Press briefing by officials of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Security and the National Immigration Administration on the Regulations. The four areas covered and the transitional rule requiring intermediary agencies already operating before the effective date to file within 90 days are from this briefing. https://www.nia.gov.cn/n741440/n741577/c1793235/content.html ↩

3. Exit and Entry Administration Law of the People's Republic of China. Adopted 30 June 2012 at the 27th session of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress; in force 1 July 2013. Article 28 lists as grounds for barring a foreign national from exit: (1) an unserved criminal sentence, or status as a defendant or suspect in a criminal case (excluding transfer of sentenced persons under applicable agreements between China and a foreign state); (2) an unresolved civil case where a people's court has decided to bar exit; (3) unpaid wages to workers where the relevant department of the State Council or a provincial-level people's government has decided to bar exit; and (4) other circumstances provided by laws and administrative regulations. Text as published by the Shanghai Municipal People's Government: https://www.shanghai.gov.cn/grgzxkgjj/20240922/ec55b54b16a2443fa9f099719a74a3ca.html ↩ ↩²

4. Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List (MOFCOM Order No. 4 of 2020, issued and in force 19 September 2020), Article 10, listing the measures that may be taken against a listed foreign entity: (1) restricting or prohibiting import and export activities relating to China; (2) restricting or prohibiting investment within China; (3) 「限制或者禁止其相关人员、交通运输工具等入境」; (4) 「限制或者取消其相关人员在中国境内工作许可、停留或者居留资格」; (5) fines according to the seriousness of the circumstances. https://dcj.mofcom.gov.cn/article/zcfb/zcblgg/202009/20200903002593.shtml — the unreliable entity list under these Provisions is a separate instrument from the control list and watch list operated under the export control framework. ↩

5. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Overseas Safety Website, spot information "China: Alert relating to China's Counter-Espionage Law" (issued 22 July 2025; posted as current information at the time of writing). The enactment of the Counter-Espionage Law in 2014 and its revision in April 2023, the amendment of the Law on Guarding State Secrets in May 2024, the confirmation that 17 Japanese nationals have been detained by Chinese authorities on offences relating to "national security" since 2014 with five still detained, the prohibition under the Law on the Protection of Military Facilities of unauthorised entry into and photography of military restricted zones and military administrative zones, the risk of detention arising from unauthorised land surveys and from collecting geographic information through GPS surveying, geological work such as hot spring drilling, ecological surveys and archaeological surveys, the possibility that merely possessing a map (including a hand-drawn one) may be treated as falling within scope, the prohibition under the Statistics Law of unauthorised statistical surveys by foreign nationals including academic sample surveys, and the statement that conduct may be investigated not only where recent but also where it occurred during earlier stays in China or outside China, are all from this spot information. https://www.anzen.mofa.go.jp/info/pcspotinfo_2025C029.html ↩ ↩² ↩³