Washington says China will not let U.S. government employee leave the country
'We are tracking this case very closely and are engaged with Chinese officials to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,' a State Department spokesperson said.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is part of the federal Department of Commerce.
The individual's name and whether the person was detained were not disclosed.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington and the U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that a U.S. citizen who works for the Commerce Department had traveled to China several months ago to visit family. The man was being prevented from leaving the country after he failed to disclose on his visa application that he worked for the U.S. government, the newspaper said, citing sources.
Beijing has used exit bans on both Chinese and foreign nationals in connection with civil disputes, regulatory enforcement and criminal investigations. Analysts say the tactic is at times used to crack down on local dissent and also as diplomatic leverage in disputes with other nations.
Washington and Beijing have had friction for years over issues ranging from tariffs to Taiwan and the origins of Covid-19.
Chenyue Mao, a Wells Fargo banker, has also been blocked from leaving China. Beijing's foreign ministry said Monday that she was involved in a criminal case and obliged to cooperate with an investigation.
Mao is the latest of several executives from foreign corporations to be stopped as they tried to depart China.
The U.S. bank suspended all employee travel to China after Mao's exit ban, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last week, saying Mao was a U.S. citizen.
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Reuters
15 minutes ago
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Thai, Cambodian leaders hold ceasefire talks in Malaysia
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Telegraph
3 hours ago
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Spectator
4 hours ago
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The state will do anything but fix the migrant crisis
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Ever since Sir Keir Starmer repeatedly linked the Southport unrest last year with social media, the idea has firmly taken root in Whitehall that the best way to stop unrest is to aggressively police the internet. Ofcom, the broadcast regulator, already takes this view, and the link has even been drawn in Department for Education guidance on how to talk to schoolchildren about the Southport disorder. In a recent report, the police inspectorate said that that forces must be 'better prepared and resourced to monitor, analyse, use and respond to online content', which it argues was a risk to public safety. This general zeal for social-media policing is why Big Brother Watch believes the new unit is very likely to infringe on free speech. The investigations team is 'Orwellian' and 'disturbing', says interim director Rebecca Vincent, creating the possibility that it 'will attempt to interfere with online content' as other government bodies are known to have done during Covid. As if there weren't enough threats to free speech already. This week age verification provisions in the latest stage of the Online Safety Act (OSA) kicked in, meaning that some footage of protests is now inaccessible on social media for many users. Not even parliamentary privilege is safe from the censorship regime. Katie Lam's searing April speech on the rape gangs, in which she quoted court transcripts and survivors, could not be watched on X without age verification. We are beginning to look like North Korea with rainbow flags: for the public's 'safety', footage exposing grievous failures of the British state now cannot be viewed in the UK. Little wonder, given the OSA explicitly earmarks content relating to 'child sexual abuse' and 'illegal immigration and people smuggling' as the 'kinds of illegal content and activity that platforms need to protect users from'. The Conservatives, who bequeathed us this blank cheque for digital authoritarianism, certainly need to take a long, hard look at themselves. The claims that the OSA is merely about restricting access to pornography has been exposed as a mere fig leaf. And still things could still get worse. As the Free Speech Union has noted, shortly after last year's riots, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a pro-censorship lobby group with ties to Morgan McSweeney, 'hosted a closed-door meeting under the Chatham House rule to discuss the role of social media in civil unrest'. In attendance were officials from the Home Office, the Department of Science, Information and Technology, Ofcom and other organisations. The CCDH proposals that emerged included amending the OSA to 'grant Ofcom additional 'emergency response' powers to fight 'misinformation' that poses a 'threat' to 'national security' and 'the health or safety of the public''. This would give Secretary of State Peter Kyle the ability to directly flag unapproved content to be taken down at a time of 'crisis'. Should the unrest continue this could well be coming down the track. What all this illustrates is just how ill-equipped the people in charge are to deal with Britain's problems, as The Spectator's Madeline Grant noted earlier this week. A powerful tendency now exists in the British state towards displacement activity. Spin doctors 'manage' the news. Police surveil social media. The government shuffles asylum seekers from hotel to hotel, or to HMOs, or even to privately rented accommodation (which it uses your own taxes to outbid you for). For his part, the prime minister has been tweeting about the women's football. As the unrest grows, leading politicians continue doggedly insist that Britain remains a 'a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country'. In reality, there are answers to the asylum hotels crisis, it's just that the government simply lacks the will to act. Large numbers of illegal migrants need to be deported, while those that are here should be placed in a secure holding facility somewhere remote. What is surely obvious by now where they should not be: in hotels, in an Essex market town 500 yards from a school; on the Bournemouth beachfront; in the London's financial district; in a Leeds suburb right next to a shopping centre. As it is, however, it seems the regime will try anything and everything before addressing people's real concerns.
