Naturalized Chinese American Not Allowed To Leave China Over Business Dispute

Hu Zhicheng, a naturalized American citizen, worked in the United States as a successful engineer for 20 years and then decided to return to China to work in 2004. Unfortunately, the last three times that Hu has tried to leave China and return to his family in Los Angeles, he hasn’t been allowed to as border agents claim he is a “wanted man.” (Back in 2008 he was jailed for a year and a half after a business associate claimed he accused him of commercial theft). So what’s the deal? According to the New York Times article, “even as official policies seek to lure Chinese-born inventors, academics and entrepreneurs with housing perks and financial incentives, lingering anti-Western xenophobia nurtured during the Mao years sometimes taints them as unpatriotic for having left. ‘It’s kind of reverse racism,’ said John Kamm, executive director of Dui Hua, an American human rights group…’If you’re ethnic Chinese with a foreign passport, you’re really not considered a foreigner.'” [h/t John]