Entry Bans of One to Five Years: Three Different Grounds in One Article, and Three Different Routes of Recourse

Delta Law Expat Services Desk　｜　Provisions of the State Council on Exit and Entry Administration（《国务院关于出境入境管理的规定》）, State Council Order No. 841, art. 5, in force from 2026-09-15

1. The document at a glance

2. One article, three grounds

The three paragraphs share a subject and a consequence, and share almost nothing else. Reading them as one rule is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

Three drafting features carry most of the practical weight. First, paragraph 2 fixes its own clock — one to five years running from completion of the punishment — while paragraph 1 fixes none. Order No. 841 does not say whether the period under paragraph 1 runs from the decision, from the refusal, or from some other event. That silence is in the published text, and this page does not resolve it.

Second, paragraph 2 closes with 「法律另有规定的，从其规定」 — where a law provides otherwise, that law applies. The most obvious such provision is the ten-year bar that follows deportation, discussed in section 5.

Third, paragraph 3 does not create a power to bar entry. It directs immigration bodies and visa authorities to implement a measure whose source lies outside Order No. 841 altogether. That difference is what changes the analysis completely.

3. Paragraph 3 is not a penalty, and its route is not the administrative one

The listings named in paragraph 3 belong to the countermeasure regime. Its governing statute states both the available measures and — decisively — the status of the decision.

Article 7 is the pivot. A decision that the statute itself declares final is not positioned as an ordinary administrative act reviewable in the ordinary way. What Article 8 offers instead is a change of circumstances, and State Council Order No. 803 turns that into an express application.

Order No. 803 also allocates implementation and marks the outer edge of what the regime can reach. Article 6 of Order No. 803 assigns the visa and entry measures under Article 6(1) of the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law to the diplomatic and national immigration administration departments according to their functions. Article 9 states that the "other necessary measures" limb includes, among others, cancelling or restricting a related person's work permit, stay or residence status in China — so for an individual the exposure is not confined to the border. Article 15 provides for the deciding department to assess implementation and effect and, on that basis or on the basis of an application, to suspend, vary or lift the measures; Article 16 allows an otherwise prohibited or restricted activity to proceed in special circumstances with that department's consent.

The practical summary is short. For paragraphs 1 and 2, the analysis is an administrative-law analysis of a decision made by an immigration authority. For paragraph 3, the analysis is directed at the department that made the listing decision, and it is an application supported by facts about correction and about eliminating the consequences of the conduct — not a challenge to the decision's validity.

4. Notice and reasons: what Article 6 covers, and what it does not

Order No. 841 contains a notification duty, and it is easy to read it more broadly than it is drafted.

Both paragraphs are drafted for 「不准出境」 — decisions not to permit exit. Article 5, the subject of this page, is about 「不准入境」 — not permitting entry. On the face of the text, Article 6's written-notice duty does not extend to an Article 5 entry bar. The Exit and Entry Administration Law then points the other way for the entry side.

The consequence for assessment is concrete: an individual affected by an Article 5 measure may not receive a statement of which paragraph was applied, and therefore may not know from the decision itself whether the position is an administrative one or a countermeasure one. Whatever facts are available — the point at which the refusal occurred, whether any punishment preceded it, whether any listing has been announced — carry more weight than usual. Reconstructing the basis is a matter of legal assessment on the available record, and no page can state in advance what a given authority will disclose; that is subject to the current published requirements of the accepting authority.

5. One to five years is not the only clock

Three regimes therefore run in parallel and must not be blended: an Article 5 bar of one to five years; a ten-year bar following deportation, with a decision the statute declares final; and, for a listing, an indefinite measure whose route is the Order No. 803 application. An order to leave within a specified time under Article 81, paragraph 1 is a fourth thing again — it ends a stay but carries no stated entry bar of its own.

6. Who runs into this, and how it is used

In practice three situations bring Article 5 into view: an application refused abroad where the applicant does not know why; a refusal at a port after a previous administrative penalty; and a corporate group assessing whether a listing affecting an affiliate touches the mobility of individuals connected to it. The first step in all three is the same — establish which paragraph is in play, because everything downstream turns on that.