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Comment by giwook

1 day ago

Somehow I think there is a real possibility more will happen.

Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.

I don't claim to know what's going on outside of what's being reported, but I'm reminded of other individuals who have "stepped out of line" (as determined by Beijing) and were also either barred from the country or mysteriously disappeared for weeks or months at a time only to randomly reappear at some point singing a different tune.

79 comments

giwook

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observationist  20 hours ago

>>> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.

This is standard operating procedure for the CCP. They are a truly ruthless, sinister group who have no scruples about ensuring compliance and using leverage on behalf of Chinese interests. Just look at what happened to Jack Ma.

  • xtracto  19 hours ago

    Gemini, Give me examples of people that the US has retained passports pending investigations

    It's standard procedure in every country for some investigations.

    • nutjob2  19 hours ago

      This is false equivalence.

      Outside of immigration issues, you can only be made to surrender your passport if you have been arrested and indicted for a crime, as a part of bail. That power can only be granted by a judge.

      China arbitrarily traps people in China without any such thing or any due process whatsoever.

      13 replies →

  • codedokode  11 hours ago

    Oh come on. Look what happened to Russian enterpreneur, Pavel Durov in France, and what happened to Julian Assange and to Edward Snowden. It's the same thing just wrapped in different colored package. You don't cooperate with the government, you have some suffering.

    • giwook  4 hours ago

      I don't know what Durov did, but Assange and Snowden released classified government documents.

      Is that what these two founders did?

cineticdaffodil  20 hours ago

Usually they just threaten the family that stayed in china to enforce compliance. As in visit by police and do a video call. Good old socialist playbook. Guess the CEOs were to workaholic ti be threatened with the mafia methods.

guywithahat  21 hours ago

> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes

I don't think it's actually that uncommon in China, especially with high profile people. To China's credit, we often bar people from leaving the country if they're charged with a crime but not convicted of anything. While it's certainly scary and authoritarian, I think it's par for the course in China. Most companies have some amount of CCP representation in them, either on the board or some level of management.

  • dublinstats  21 hours ago

    Shouldn't every country be barring people from leaving the country if they've been charged with a crime? At least if there's a good chance they will flee justice.

    This seems like a side issue from the question of whether the charges are legitimate.

    • skippyboxedhero  20 hours ago

      Yes, everyone country does this. You can be barred from travel in a wide range of other circumstances in many other countries.

      Every person has a nationalistic solipsism that renders them incapable of understanding events that occur outside of their own country. China and the US are two countries where this tends to be most severe, people outside these countries seem to believe they possess a profound and innate understanding of events there that renders them capable of offering a complete opinion (and, in reality, that opinion will almost always be entirely self-referential, 20% of the comments on this thread seem to be talking about the US).

      At a high-level, the characterization of China as a lawless dictatorship is undermined somewhat by the higher levels of crime in almost every other country. You will see this interpretation of China from people in the US who live in places where there are constant, visible signs of crime.

      13 replies →

    • mothballed  20 hours ago

      It's extremely common even without a crime. US block or cancel people with extremely small child support debts (I think like $1000 which is a single missed payment for middle class person) and people with moderate tax debts (I think about $25,000) for instance from getting a passport.

ahmadyan  21 hours ago

> Barring them from leaving the country feels a bit sinister for people who haven't been accused of committing any crimes.

Pure speculation on my part, but i would be surprised if China didn't have our equivalent of export control laws, not difficult to fabricate a crime and pin it on founders.

  • refulgentis  21 hours ago

    Yr parent is new to standard China legal mechanisms and you pivoted off of that to invent a chain of stuff that isn’t real. Are they unfamiliar to us? Yes. But it’s worth speaking to whether the speculation is rational.