The human rights organization Safeguard Defenders released an investigative report this week, "New Regulations Give Police More Power to Punish Petitioners." According to the report, the "Measures of the National Bureau of Letters and Calls on Further Regulating the Registration of People's Visitors", which came into effect on July 1 this year, has two major changes: Article 4 stipulates that petitioners cannot register complaints in Beijing if they do not have documents proving that they have completed the procedures with the petition department at the same or higher level; Article 6 prohibits repeated petitions in Beijing, gives the public security organs the power to "educate" and "guidance and persuasion" for repeated petitioners, and may criminalize the behavior of "causing trouble and disturbing the order" or "stalking and making trouble" in Beijing.
Lawyers interviewed cited two reasons: to reduce the total number of petitions and to make local governments take more responsibility to keep petitioners and possible violence out of Beijing. Two lawyers said the petition system has been flooded with more complaints than it can handle, and that the current system has clearly not worked for years - inspection teams have been bogged down by cases, petitioners are stuck in endless procedures, and local governments are under great pressure and expense to intercept them. One of the lawyers believes that the new regulations are directly aimed at the Fangshan incident in Beijing on March 29 this year: According to overseas media reports, a petitioner from Dalian, Liaoning Province drove a forklift into a crowd of people at a local market multiple times, reportedly killing 13 people.
The report points out that petitioning is legal in principle, but local governments are afraid of being punished for too many petitions. They often target petitioners with trumped-up charges such as "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," or illegally lock people in mental hospitals. They also often hire thugs from security companies to kidnap and intimidate people. Scholar Wang Huiling calls this practice "outsourcing repression." The new regulations mean that the police can now take action openly and formally. The report believes that the petition system used to be a pressure relief valve for the CCP. It not only allowed those with grievances to feel that they could seek justice, but also allowed the authorities to understand public dissatisfaction and measure the performance of local officials. It is unclear why the central government no longer considers this arrangement useful. The reason may be that China has developed into a surveillance state and no longer needs this window. A lawyer's judgment is that the "Beijing Route" that was very important to the petitioners in the past has basically been blocked.
China's new Immigration Regulations came into effect on September 15. On the same day, the New York-based Human Rights Foundation published a report "Beyond the Risks of Violating the Law: Traveling to China." The report believes that the new regulations do not establish a general new exit ban on foreign visitors, but it further formalizes a larger legal system - a system in which the boundaries of prohibited behaviors are difficult to predict and effective ways to challenge government decisions are very limited.
The report emphasizes that the risk does not come from a single regulation, but from the overlap of multiple laws: the "Counterespionage Law" authorizes the inspection and seizure of electronic equipment, verbal summons, and explicitly allows restrictions on the exit of suspected espionage activities. However, neither this law nor the "Law on the Protection of State Secrets" clearly defines "espionage" or "national security" ; Article 63 of the National Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which was implemented this year, establishes extraterritorial jurisdiction, which can hold overseas individuals and organizations responsible for "undermining national unity." It also does not define terms or stipulate penalties - this means that overseas initiatives, news, research and even the participation of overseas Chinese communities may be deemed illegal. The report pointed out that China does not publish complete exit ban data, and most foreigners only find out that they are prohibited from leaving the country when they are actually stopped at the airport.
The report specifically reminds that travel risks cannot only be determined by the behavior of travelers themselves. Restricting one person from leaving the country is sometimes just to form a bargaining chip for another person - U.S. permanent resident Gao Shen was detained during his vacation in China, and his son with American nationality was also unable to leave due to restrictions on Gao Shen's wife's departure. The risk of this connection is two-way: travelers may also expose local residents and their relatives to questioning or even detention through meetings, communications or photos. The report concluded that no single smooth trip can be a reliable indicator of future security.
Reporters Without Borders published an exclusive interview with Uyghur journalist Gulchehra Hoja. She first hosted a children's show on Xinjiang TV Channel 2 when she felt "tremendous pressure" from the Chinese regime - which she said was trying to turn her role into a propaganda tool. A trip to Europe in 2001 was her first exposure to the world outside of China's censorship. After hearing reports from Radio Free Asia during the trip, she realized that everything she had done in the past had nothing to do with real journalism; in October of the same year, she joined the station's Uyghur language department and settled in the United States.
Chinese authorities subsequently branded her a "separatist" - a charge often added to local journalists and punishable by death - and in 2017 a "terrorist" and detained 25 of her family members, including parents and siblings, overnight. Aleksandra Bielakowska, the organization's Asia-Pacific regional advocacy manager, said the suppression against her and her family has only one purpose - to silence her. Hoja has not seen his family since leaving China more than two decades ago, has no idea what happened to several detained relatives, and worries that the few remaining phone calls are being monitored. She said that allowing the mother to go to a safe place is not only a humanitarian concern, but also sends a powerful message: authoritarian governments cannot hold journalists' families hostage to silence their voices.
Hoja became the organization's correspondent in East Turkestan in June this year. But the article points out that the pressure doesn’t just come from China: She has been on leave without pay at Radio Free Asia since June 2025 due to the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down the station’s Uyghur service, one of the few news organizations that independently reports on the treatment of Uyghurs. She warned that without the unit, the international community would lose its only window into one of China's most information-controlled areas. According to the organization's 2026 World Press Freedom Index, China ranks 178th out of 180 countries and regions. It is also the country with the largest number of imprisoned journalists in the world. There are currently 119 journalists detained, of which at least 80 are detained in Xinjiang.
