Advocacy Group Urges China to Lift Exit Bans on 7-Year-Old and His Mother

‘The Chinese government must stop persecuting the Gao family,’ John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, said.

A guard looks through the window of a hallway inside a detention center in Beijing, on Oct. 25, 2012. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

A Chinese mother and her U.S.-born young child are being barred from leaving China after a family trip there in 2024, another case in which Beijing has stopped foreigners and Chinese nationals from exiting the country.

On Aug. 7, the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group for at-risk detainees in China, raised the plight of the Gao family—permanent U.S. residents Gao Zhen and his wife, Zhao Yaliang, and their 7-year-old son, Gao Jia, a U.S. citizen from New York state.

The senior Gao and his younger brother, Gao Qiang, are well-known as the “Gao Brothers” for their works of art critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of their particularly well-known art pieces is a bronze statue of CCP leader Mao Zedong. It depicts him kneeling with a sorrowful expression, his right hand on his chest.

In August 2024, Gao Zhen was detained on the charge of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” during a family trip. The foundation pointed out that the charge was based on a law that went into effect in 2018 (the Law on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs) but that Gao Zhen’s artworks mocking the CCP’s leadership were created before 2009.

Zhao and her son have been barred from leaving China since the senior Gao’s arrest. The foundation has questioned why Beijing chose to impose the exit ban on them, noting that neither one is accused of a crime or required for any criminal investigation by the Chinese authorities.

Unable to return to the United States, the 7-year-old Gao Jia “has been unable to attend school for a full year,” the foundation stated.

“It’s one thing to slap exit bans on adult Americans like bankers or government employees; it’s an entirely different matter to impose an exit ban on a young child,” John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, said in a statement.

In July, the Chinese regime announced that it had imposed an exit ban on Mao Chenyue, an Atlanta-based managing director at Wells Fargo. It accused the banker of being “involved in a criminal case.”

Also in July, the U.S. State Department confirmed that a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office employee was being prevented from leaving China after traveling there in a personal capacity.

In September 2024, the foundation estimated that there were “more than 300 Americans under coercive measures in China,” and that more than 30 were under exit bans.

The foundation stated that China’s treatment of the younger Gao violates the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which China signed in 1990 and ratified two years later.

As for the senior Gao, the foundation stated that he is scheduled to be tried and sentenced “in the coming weeks,” and warned that he could receive a long sentence, despite his not-guilty plea.

“Charging someone with a crime that was not a crime at the time the alleged offense took place is a violation of a fundamental principle of justice, the principle of non-retroactive application of the law,” Kamm said.

“The Chinese government must stop persecuting the Gao family. It must free Gao Zhen and lift the exit bans on Gao Jia and his mother and allow them to return to the United States.”

New York City-based nonprofit Human Rights Foundation sent a letter dated Oct. 31, 2024, to the Consulate-General of China in New York City, demanding the senior Gao’s immediate and unconditional release.

The letter, written by the foundation’s Chief Advocacy Officer Roberto González, argued that Gao Zhen’s works of art “are incredibly necessary [for] educating the world on the truth of Mao’s dictatorial legacy.”

Mao encouraged the Red Guards, who were Chinese high school and university students, to persecute those identified as “class enemies” of the communist regime, amid the Cultural Revolution that lasted 10 years until Mao’s death in 1976.

González also argued that Beijing should repeal the Law on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs to “safeguard artistic freedom in China.”

“[Gao Zhen’s] detention is not just a violation of his rights but a blatant abuse of power and an attack on the fundamental human freedoms of all Chinese people who have the right to learn the truth about dictator Mao Zedong,” the letter reads.