China expands travel restrictions to families of top AI and chip executives

China has quietly escalated one of its most consequential tech-sector policies. The government has extended overseas travel restrictions to include the family members of leading AI and chip executives at private companies, requiring government pre-approval before relatives can leave the country.

The move, reported by Bloomberg on September 28, 2026, marks a sharp widening of measures that first appeared in May 2026, when Beijing began mandating travel pre-approval for top AI professionals at firms including Alibaba and DeepSeek.

How the restrictions evolved

DeepSeek employees began surrendering passports around March 2026, a timeline that coincides with the public release of the company’s R1 model. That same month, authorities imposed exit bans on the co-founders of Manus AI amid scrutiny of a major acquisition the startup was pursuing.

By May 2026, the restrictions had formalized into a pre-approval requirement covering top professionals at private-sector AI firms broadly. September 15, 2026 brought another turn: nationwide rules took effect that formalize penalties specifically tied to violations of industrial and technological security, giving the exit-ban framework a firmer legal backbone.

Now, two weeks after those rules went live, the net has widened again. Family members of key executives are now subject to the same pre-approval requirement, meaning a spouse or child booking an international trip is effectively asking the government for permission.

What Beijing is trying to protect

The shift from state-linked individuals to private-sector talent is significant on its own. For years, exit bans and travel controls were associated primarily with government officials, state enterprise executives, and people under direct legal scrutiny. Applying the same tools to engineers and researchers at startups is a different category of intervention entirely.