China stops us commerce worker from leaving country, media say

Bloomberg News on Jul 20, 2025

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China has stopped a U.S. citizen who works for America’s Commerce Department from leaving the nation for several months, according to media reports, an episode that comes as Beijing and Washington try to arrange a leaders’ summit so they can address their differences on trade.

The Chinese-American individual who works for the Patent and Trademark Office had traveled to the Asian nation to meet relatives, the Washington Post reported, citing four people familiar with the matter. The newspaper said it didn’t know the name of the man facing a so-called exit ban, adding that the incident was over a failure to disclose on a visa application that he worked for the U.S. government.

The man was detained when he arrived in the southwestern city of Chengdu in April, the South China Morning Post reported Sunday, citing a person familiar with the situation. The man was being prevented from leaving China because his case was “related to actions Beijing deemed harmful to national security,” the newspaper reported, though the specifics couldn’t be confirmed.

Since the man arrived in Chengdu, he had also traveled to the Chinese capital with a U.S. official, the newspaper reported.

Neither the U.S. Commerce Department nor the Foreign Ministry in Beijing responded to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

Officials from Beijing and Washington — including in the Commerce Department — are negotiating a trade deal after President Donald Trump hit goods from China with heavy tariffs that he later paused. Trump also wants a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping to sort through their problems, which also touch on technology curbs, rare earths and the status of Taiwan.

To get the sitdown and a trade pact, Trump has recently softened his harsh campaign rhetoric that focused on the U.S.’s massive trade deficit with China and resulting job losses.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after meeting his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that there was “a strong desire on both sides” for a Xi-Trump meeting.

China’s use of exit bans has been a point of contention between Beijing and Washington. The U.S. State Department has repeatedly advised citizens to reconsider travel to China based on what it called the “arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans.”

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(With assistance from Catherine Lucey and James Mayger.)