Beijing’s new exit-and-entry rules came into force on Tuesday, giving authorities power to bar citizens from leaving the country over export-control or technology-transfer violations serious enough to threaten national security. The State Council finalized the rules in July; a separate provision lets authorities keep returnees out of the country for six months up to three years if they broke the law while overseas.
The rules target a specific problem — Beijing watching valuable people and money leave the country. Evercore ISI China strategist Neo Wang told CNBC the goal is “to keep home the capital and talent that might otherwise leave with them.”
Regulators have grown especially focused on foreign firms recruiting Chinese engineers who know export-controlled processes like rare-earth separation and battery chemistry, dangling better salaries and residency to replicate Chinese production lines overseas. The new rules also line up with an intensifying US-China race over AI and other strategic technology. They convert what used to be ad hoc, case-by-case travel restrictions into a standing legal power — though the rules stop short of grounding every tech employee or wealthy family outright.
Ren Zhengfei, Huawei founder and CEO, reportedly fled China with his entire family just before the rules took hold — or so a fast-spreading, entirely unverified rumor claims. Neither he nor Huawei has said a word to confirm or deny it.
Related posts allege Huawei chairman Liang Hua went two days without reaching Ren, then found his daughter and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou impossible to reach too, along with more than a dozen relatives. Other posts, none independently verified, claim someone spotted a van pulling away from Ren’s residence overnight, driving in the direction of the Dapeng Peninsula — which some have taken as a sign the family tried to leave China by boat — and that armed officers have massed outside Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters.
Not everyone is buying it, though. Huawei Central reported that Taiwanese scholar JC Shen called the rumors weak, noting how simple it would be to fabricate such claims given how rarely Ren appears in public and how little transparency Chinese authorities typically offer.
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Incidentally, Huawei’s long-delayed US criminal trial opened in Brooklyn federal court September 9 on 14 counts including racketeering, bank fraud, wire fraud and trade secret theft. Prosecutors opened by calling Huawei a “criminal enterprise,” and the case could run for months.
One Response
Hope that with Meng goes to prison!