Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said recently that since the end of June it has received several more reports of Taiwanese people losing contact after travelling to China.
According to figures released by the Council, 361 reports of Taiwanese citizens going out of contact after entering China were received between January 1, 2024 and the end of May 2025; by the end of June the figure had risen to 374.
In recent years the governments of Taiwan, the United States, Australia and Canada, among others, have all updated their travel advisories for China, citing arbitrary law enforcement, exit bans, and legal risks connected to national security.
The reason is an important shift in China’s legal environment over the past several years: the expansion of national security regulation.
The Counter-Espionage Law revised in 2023, for instance, not only broadened what counts as “espionage” but also widened the room for state security organs to act in individual cases. China’s use of exit bans has likewise drawn increasing international attention; they may be applied on national security grounds, in civil disputes or for other administrative reasons, and some cases have lacked transparent legal process or avenues of redress. Foreign governments have therefore advised travellers and businesses to take greater care over legal risk when gathering information, conducting commercial due diligence or engaging with sensitive subjects inside China.
In addition, the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, passed in early July this year, writes the “sense of community of the Chinese nation” into institutional practice. The law is not aimed at ordinary travellers, and it does not mean that travel to China necessarily carries legal risk — but it does reflect China’s recent tendency to use legal instruments to strengthen ethnic and national identity and social governance.
These developments affect not only researchers, media workers and human rights advocates. For communities such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, which stand in a particular political relationship to China, understanding how the legal environment is changing has itself become an important consideration in any cross-border exchange.
The New School for Democracy believes that when law becomes a central instrument of governance and of constructing political identity, democratic societies have all the more reason to protect those who come under pressure for refusing a single political narrative, for seeking free expression, or for defending human rights. Only through transparent institutional oversight and international cooperation can the new challenges that cross-border pressure poses to individual freedom be answered.