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Is this actually happening and not just coping accusations from a dying empire? We've known for a long time they're ahead. But truly, where Liang last year spoke of Chinese industry seeing its place as only productizing, they see true innovation's around the corner.
I don't believe it exists. The only articulations thither I've heard involve the Benedict option or deportations, but lack positivist goals. Hajnals of yore built cathedrals, today's don't even hope to build, let alone transcend. It's shameful what they've taken from themselves. This is the West's century of humiliation, but worse as the sell themselves to the youthful Chinese like African leaders to slavers. Many Western traditionalists, Christian nationalists etc. have told me they believe China'd be a better hegemon though, and welcome this. How insular. What of striving, Promethean urges? Does myopic Icarus now only build rocket emojis for his stocks?
How can we disagree? Seeing the new paradigm, my little mind just wonders how to amass and secure resources and continue my line, such middling human concerns. I even work finance instead of pushing the envelope. No wonder we've stagnated.
No idea about deepseek specifically but the bosses taking your passport away is absolutely 100% a thing in China right now. And not just for sensitive jobs but alot of pretty normal jobs too.
In addition to the primary role of population control purposes (it's easier to monitor foreign activities by domestic individuals if more stay domestic and fewer go abroad), it's also a (small) part of the post-2010s Chinese capital control policy.
Back in the mid-2010s there was a major surge in capital outflows when China announced a surprise devaluation.. Because the devaluation wiped out the value of the Chinese-held savings, as such devaluations do, it prompted a major exodus of Chinese privately-held wealth as people wanted to get it outside into 'safer' investments less subject to devaluation (or, in the Chinese property market's case, crash).
There are indicators there is currently an... I don't want to say identical, but analogous, outflow. Rather than devaluation, however, this is being driven more by market uncertainty of the Chinese in the domestic economic prospects which- while already heavily dependent on state-led investment for growth- is also dealing with things like, say, the Trump trade war policies, which became more and more credible as last year went on.
Passport control is a (small) part of limiting private savings going abroad, rather than staying inside China. Chinese citizens have relatively limited ability to legally move major sums of money out of the country. For various reasons, it's easier to do so if they are able to go outside of China more easily. Withholding passports is how you can limit things like citizens carrying hard drives of crypto-currency bought inside of China to cash out outside of China.
This isn't the sort of capital control countries boast about, but it is part of why China's foreign investment action plan plan for facilitating foreign investment includes one-way movement improvements under point 19, Facilitate the movement of personnel. The goal is to facilitate the movement of people with money into China, not out.
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Does that happen legally? Would the police do anything if you reported it? Or is all tacitly condoned by the government?
Legally for various civil servants and state-owned enterprises (which dominate the economy in general), generally tacit for the rest.
China approaches foreign travel of citizens as a necessary risk / national security issue to manage in general, and so isn't adverse to curtailment on any number of grounds. Like with many governments with tight business connections, if a business can frame an action in terms favorable to the state's interpretation, it can often get away with things that might have an ulterior motive. Businesses in turn can have their own interests in demanding someone turn over their passport, though I'm not aware of it being any sort of widespread business abuse in China.
Since part of Xi's model for China is that every business or organization of consequence needs strong ties to the party-state, this implicitly favors a two-party veto on foreign travel: the government can restrict passport-travel for its reasons, and/or businesses can restrict it for their own.
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I'm not aware of any law against it specifically, or what general legal principles would make it illegal. I'd even guess that it would be legal in the US, though largely not used because nobody wants to do it.
It's common for government workers especially, so I'm sure the government condones the practice to a certain degree.
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