China Exit Bans and the Corporate Device Dilemma: A 2026 Duty-of-Care Briefing

An exit ban is a legal measure that prevents an individual from leaving the country, often imposed without public notice and sometimes discovered only at the airport when a traveller attempts to depart. Crucially, exit bans are not reserved for criminal suspects. They are increasingly applied in civil and commercial contexts — to compel cooperation in a business dispute, to secure a witness, or to pressure a party in a disagreement that may not even involve the traveller directly. The exposure is uneven. Dual nationals — particularly those holding Chinese nationality alongside another passport — face heightened risk, because authorities may not recognise the foreign nationality and the protections that come with it. Travellers of Chinese descent, and senior executives of companies embroiled in disputes, also warrant particular caution. The uncomfortable reality is that two colleagues on the same trip can carry entirely different levels of risk, and a duty-of-care programme that treats them identically is failing the more exposed one.

The single most under-managed exposure in China travel is dual nationality. Many organisations hold nationality data that is incomplete or outdated, and many travellers do not think to disclose a second nationality — or a former one — because it feels irrelevant to a business trip. It is not. China does not generally recognise dual nationality, and a traveller who entered on a foreign passport may still be treated as a Chinese citizen for the purposes of consular access, legal process, and exit control. This can mean that if something goes wrong, the traveller's home government has severely limited ability to assist. The practical implication for organisations is that pre-travel risk assessment for China must include a careful, confidential conversation about nationality, heritage, and any prior connection to the country — not as intrusion, but as the only way to give the traveller an accurate picture of their personal exposure and the limits of the help available if they need it.

The second major stream of risk is digital. Devices carried into China — laptops, phones, tablets — are exposed to inspection, and the broader legal environment obliges local entities to cooperate with state-security requests. For organisations handling sensitive intellectual property, commercial negotiations, or regulated data, the question is no longer whether to secure devices but whether standard corporate devices should enter the country at all. A growing number of multinationals have adopted "clean device" policies for China travel: travellers carry loaner hardware containing only what the specific trip requires, connect through controlled channels, and return the device for forensic wiping on arrival home. This is not paranoia — it is a proportionate response to a legal and operational environment in which the confidentiality of data on a device cannot be assumed. The cost of a clean-device programme is trivial against the cost of a compromised negotiation or an intellectual-property leak.

Beyond the physical device, the communications environment in China requires deliberate planning. Access to many familiar services is restricted, and the assumption of private, secure communication that travellers take for granted elsewhere does not hold. Organisations should decide in advance how travellers will communicate, what they will and will not discuss over local networks, and how they will handle sensitive information during the trip. The grey zone is wide: activities that are entirely routine elsewhere — accessing certain cloud services, discussing a commercial position over a messaging app, carrying research materials — can carry ambiguous legal risk in China. The goal is not to make travellers anxious but to replace vague unease with clear, specific guidance: use these channels, avoid these topics on local networks, carry only these materials, and route anything sensitive through the pre-agreed secure path.

The organisations that manage China travel well treat it as a distinct category with its own protocol, not as an ordinary trip with extra caution. That protocol begins well before departure: a confidential personal-exposure assessment covering nationality and heritage; a decision on devices and data based on the sensitivity of the trip; clear communication and information-handling guidance; and a defined escalation plan if a traveller is detained, questioned, or prevented from leaving. It also includes honest conversations about which trips are genuinely necessary and which individuals are best suited to make them — because sometimes the correct duty-of-care decision is to send a different traveller, or to conduct the business remotely. A China protocol is not about deterring travel; it is about ensuring that when the organisation does send someone, it has given them an accurate understanding of the environment and a genuine plan for the things that can go wrong.

The through-line of every point above is that China risk is intensely personal. The same trip, the same company, the same meetings can carry a low risk profile for one traveller and a materially elevated one for another, based on nationality, heritage, seniority, and the specific commercial context. This is precisely the kind of intersectional exposure that generic, destination-level risk ratings cannot capture. A China risk rating that says "Level 2, exercise increased caution" tells a traveller almost nothing about whether they personally are exposed to exit-ban risk. Effective duty of care in 2026 means moving past one-size-fits-all destination ratings toward personalised assessment that accounts for who the traveller is, not just where they are going. For China more than almost anywhere, the identity of the traveller is a primary variable — and treating it as such is not discrimination but genuine, honest care.