Originally Posted by
moondog
Perhaps I shouldn't have drawn on 2008 as an example because my recollection of the details is not crystal clear, and I'd also like to redact "well publicized" as this sort of misses the mark.
Rather, allow me to introduce a more recent data point that illustrates the types of measures the government has at its disposal to affect policy without changing it. On October 1, all airports and sea ports in Beijing and Hebei were officially closed for ~3 hours in the morning, and effectively closed for much of the day. During this time, there were almost no entries or exits. Sure, this is an isolated example, and didn't exactly shake up the order of the universe, but my point is that administrative tools are often available.
I will admit that the Turkey thing continues to perplex me though, as it contradicts much of what I've learned about Chinese legal institutions both during the course of my studies with some of the "foreign experts" who were brought in to shore them up starting in 1978, and in the field subsequently.
ayesha_london · 137 forum posts
London, UK
Apr 21, 2019, 5:17 AM
Hello all
Just to let you know we are Asian British born with a birtish passport and were denied a transit visa to leave the airport at Beijing on our way back from Thailand due to having a number of Turkish visa stamps in our passport we go on holiday to a resort twice a year to Turkey Antalya. We also have stamps from many other countries like Us India Egypt Nigeria etc We were not questioned on this but when I pushed as to reason why they were very open it was due to this and our ethnicity.
People with less transit times but with usa and Russian nationally were allowed in.
We always knew it would be up to the discretion of the immigration officer with a 10 hour lay over we had warned the children about this however the 10 hours become 6 hours due to delayed flight but USA citizens with 5 hours were allowed out.
I hadn’t realised they would just deny because of the Turkish stamps next to us a Russian citizen was questioned about a transit visa in Turkey where they were for a few hours. But were then allowed to leave the airport their next flight was the same time as ours.