An unspecified “she” was about to marry the love of her life. But “instead of congratulating their long-time colleague, her co-workers, under the orders of their department head, urged her to think again.”
The problem was a long-established rule in the People’s Republic of China that prohibits civil servants and others with “significant secrets” from wedding foreigners. But marriage with foreigners is not the only thing on the state worker’s must-not-do list (CNN, August 16, 2026).
Since Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, many aspects of personal life for members of the Communist Party or the state sector, from divorce to travel and social activities, have come under increasing scrutiny….
“This conflation between the individual and the party and the mission is really quite different under Xi than it was under his direct predecessors,” said Katja Drinhausen, the head of program for politics and society at the think tank Merics, based in Berlin.
In China, anyone who holds a position of authority is almost certainly a party member, and being kicked out of the party means the end of one’s political career.
Other governments, including the US, have their own rules and disclosure requirements, but beyond the breadth of the controls in China, the sheer number of people affected is striking—and reaches far beyond civil servants.
A paper published by China’s Fudan University estimated nearly 70 million people were employed by the state in 2020, including employees of public hospitals, schools, universities and state-owned enterprises.
The rationales for the various rules include national security concerns and Xi Jinping’s perpetual anti-corruption campaigns and loyalty campaigns. (The last two tend to blur into each other, failure to be absolutely loyal to the corrupt CCP and corrupt Xi serving as perhaps even stronger proof of corruption than pocketing bribes.)
When the cost of violating a style-crimping rule is your state job but the benefit is great, why not violate it and, for example, marry the person you want? One of CCN’s interviewees says that “The allure of power is too great. Entering the system is practically equivalent to becoming an official, and becoming an official means being above others.”
It’s also not necessarily easy, if you lose one job, to pick up another in the troubled Chinese economy. Especially when the entire very large job sector with which you have experience is now closed to you.
