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Officials whose children remain overseas and decline to return to China are facing marginalization, according to people familiar with the matter. Several retired cadres say it has become increasingly difficult for them to leave the country. In some areas, oversight has expanded from bureau-level retirees to division-level and even section-level officials in key departments.
On Feb. 18, 2026, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported, citing three informed sources, that since early 2025 government departments and state-owned enterprises have carried out repeated internal inspections. The reviews focused on identifying overseas connections among senior officials and executives.
For years, discipline authorities have treated officials whose spouses and children reside abroad for extended periods as high-risk cases. Those officials are commonly referred to within the party system as “naked officials,” meaning their immediate family has emigrated.
According to the sources cited by the South China Morning Post, scrutiny has now widened. Officials whose children live overseas while their spouses remain in China are also being placed under stricter supervision and required to report relevant information promptly. Inside the system, such figures are described as “half-naked officials.”
Under existing party regulations, officials formally classified as “naked” are required to step down. The rule has led some to conceal their status. In September 2022, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection disclosed that Wang Dawei, then former vice governor of Liaoning Province and former head of its public security department, had hidden his “naked official” status.
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As the political atmosphere tightened through 2025, authorities moved before year’s end to sideline a number of “naked” and “half-naked” officials with ties to Western societies.
On Nov.1, 2025, several senior figures were removed from leadership posts in Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference special committees. They included Yi Gang, former governor of the People’s Bank of China, and Wang Rong, former chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CPPCC. Sing Tao Daily, citing sources, reported that the action followed a review of officials with overseas spouses or children, during which authorities learned that some of their children were unwilling to return to China.
In the second half of 2025 alone, statistics showed that at least 20 officials were no longer serving in major posts. Among them were Yan Aoshuang, vice chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress; Liu Duo, vice mayor of Shanghai; Zhang Guangjun, former vice minister of science and technology and later party secretary of Huazhong University of Science and Technology; and Lin Shangli, president of Renmin University of China and former deputy director of the Central Policy Research Office.
Earlier official disclosures have tied the phenomenon of “naked officials” to corruption risks. In 2014, the Beijing Municipal People’s Procuratorate said that over nearly three decades, about 4,000 corrupt officials had fled abroad, each taking an average of roughly 100 million yuan in illicit funds. It reported that “naked officials” accounted for 40 percent of ordinary economic cases and as much as 80 percent of cases involving corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds.
The ability of some officials to arrange overseas residency and property purchases for spouses and children has been described as closely linked to corruption. As scrutiny of such ties intensifies, restrictions on overseas travel have expanded as well, now reaching into the ranks of retirees.
A Chinese passport. (Image: Adobe Stock)
In Hunan Province and elsewhere, retired officials say exit controls have grown stricter in recent months. An insider told overseas Chinese-language media that the most notable change is a lower threshold for oversight. Management has expanded from bureau-level retirees to division-level retirees who previously held sensitive information or key posts. A notice emphasized that retirement does not remove individuals from party management and that approval is still required before traveling abroad.
Mr. Chen, a retired division-level official in Jiangsu, said exit controls once focused mainly on bureau-level cadres. “Now retired division-level personnel in key positions like us have also been brought under management,” he said. His former work unit orally informed retirees that anyone seeking to travel abroad for tourism or to visit relatives or friends must submit an application and receive approval before proceeding.
Ms. Zhou, a serving civil servant in Beijing, said active officials have always needed authorization to leave the country, while retirees previously faced looser requirements. “Now some division-level officials in key departments, even after retirement, must report. Passports of officials in special positions must be centrally kept,” she said.
In Jiuquan, Gansu Province, a retired official using the pseudonym Zhang Xiang said local authorities have tightened controls even at the section level. “In the past, section chiefs only needed to file a record before leaving. Now they must apply for approval,” he said. “Retired personnel at division level and above were originally restricted from leaving within three years of retirement, but the time limit has been extended. Recently, even section chiefs must complete both filing and approval procedures.”
A retired civil servant in Hunan described a similar shift. Under previous local rules, officials at deputy division level or above were required, within three years of retirement, to register in advance with the local Public Security Bureau’s Exit-Entry Administration before traveling abroad. The filing requirement was to be lifted after three years.
He said that has changed. Although he has been retired for more than three years, he must still apply to his former unit and file with the local public security bureau before traveling.
Before retirement, he served as a deputy division-level official. After retirement, his passport and Hong Kong and Macau travel permit are kept by his former unit’s personnel department. He must complete an application form and provide his flight number before departure. The passport is returned only two days before leaving China. Within one week of his return, he is required to hand it back for safekeeping.
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