Welcome back! “China color” is a column that records Chinese people’s unfiltered voices, as well as field trips by our contributors. Here are some of our previous pieces as examples: how do Chinese graduates feel about the job market, a trip to Mixue’s hometown, both of which you can read for free without subscribing.
In less than three weeks, an anxiety-ridden new regulation those whom go through China’s borders will take effect.
On the surface, many other countries are also stepping up measures at the border (Europe’s Entry/Exit System comes to mind). So, what’s so special about the 19-article Regulations of the State Council on the Administration of Exit and Entry?
While including a clause punishing unlawful foreign nationals, this regulation mainly holds up the threshold that governs the mobility of Chinese nationals.
Previously, it has become common knowledge that Chinese civil servants, as well as those at certain schools, banks, and CSOEs, having to hand in their passports and giving the ultimate deciding power to employers for any outbound trip plans. Passport confiscations have reportedly happened to ethnic minorities (including those in Xinjiang and Tibet), as well as high-tech AI talent from DeepSeek and Alibaba.
As we see in our social media sentiment analysis later, the announcement, dropped on July 31, caused widespread anxiety especially among people with foreign residency permits, public sector staff, and people who are planning to travel after Sep 15.
Having garnered wide attention from Western media, from BBC to France24 and DW, Chinese edition of Global Times published a commentary in early August, aiming to make a matter-of-fact case that was cast under a negative light by the West.
“In recent years, more and more foreign friends have, through on-the-ground visits and firsthand experience, seen a China that is starkly different from the image long vilified by Western media.
This kind of grassroots exchange based on ‘seeing is believing’ has broken the narrative monopoly that certain forces have carefully cultivated. When some Western public opinion is stirring up ‘panic,’ we would like to ask: who exactly is panicking, and about what?”
To answer this (rhetorical) question, we analyzed popular posts and comments under the keywords “exit-entry new rules / Regulations on Exit and Entry Administration / Sept 15 exit-entry rules / exit restrictions” with the help of open-source tool MediaCrawler and Claude.
Our sample size are 816 Rednote comments, collected 7 days after the regulation was announced on July 31, and 2,335 comments 20 days after the announcement, respectively. (The second dataset only includes part of the first one as Rednote shifts search results based on popularity, and some comments were quickly deleted by the user/platform.)
“Who exactly is panicking, and about what?”
There are three groups of people who have demonstrated more fears than others:
Green-card and permanent-residency holders
Public-sector staff, especially teachers
Travellers holding tickets for late September
Four Typical Attitudes (based on data collected July 31-August 7)
Five Typical Attitudes ((based on data collected July 31-August 20)
