The State Department updated its travel advisory following Beijing’s detention of two more U.S. citizens.

By Dorothy Li, published by The Epoch Times

In Brief by Probe International

After two more American citizens were detained by Chinese authorities, the U.S. State Department updated its China Travel Advisory to warn that “unjust arrest or detention” is a real possibility. The dangers “are not hypothetical,” the office of the president’s special envoy for hostage affairs wrote on social media, reports The Epoch Times.

The warning is directed at travelers, residents, scholars, and anyone bound to China by family or professional connections. Authorities have detained people and imposed exit bans even on those who traveled there for research or conferences.

U Min Zin, a U.S. citizen who co-founded a think tank focused on Burma (Myanmar), was arrested on June 3 in Yunnan Province. Chinese authorities had invited him to an academic conference. Once there, Beijing accused him of espionage; the U.S. has designated him wrongfully detained.

Chen Youlin, a Chinese-born American seismologist, has been held for nearly two years without a trial. Authorities charged him with espionage, but rights advocates say the real target was his work on U.S. government-funded research projects.

These are not isolated incidents. The Epoch Times article also highlights the case of Gao Zhen, a prominent artist and U.S. permanent resident who was sentenced in August to three years for artwork from the early 2000s that a Chinese court said insulted “heroes and martyrs.” Since his mid-2024 arrest, authorities have barred Gao’s wife (also a U.S. permanent resident) and their son (a U.S. citizen) from leaving China.

In July 2025 the State Department disclosed an exit ban on a U.S. citizen who works for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; there has been no public update since.

The people detained so far have been scholars, researchers with U.S. funding or government-adjacent work, artists whose past output offended official narratives, and individuals with family or professional ties that Beijing can leverage. The circumstances have included invited academic travel, routine research, and communications that would be unremarkable in most other countries.

The U.S. government is now stating those risks in explicit terms rather than treating them as remote possibilities.

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