Exit Banned

An American Executive Held Hostage for 69 Days in China

He reached the airport prepared for a routine flight. 

He never got on the plane. 

And China would not let him leave the country. 

In March 2010, American executive Morris Huntly showed up at Shanghai’s airport thinking a short flight home to Hong Kong awaited him. Instead, he found himself stuck in a legal and political black hole. Huntly was snared in China’s opaque system of “exit bans,” where foreigners are kept as human leverage in business disagreements they have no control over.

Exit Banned takes the reader inside Huntly’s harrowing true account of sixty-nine days inside the borders of a rising superpower that quietly weaponized his freedom. A long-time dealmaker familiar with the dangers of working in Asia—run out of Bangkok, threatened by mobs in Jakarta—Huntly thought he understood risk. This time, he was wrong. His former employer left him on his own. A politically connected Chinese tycoon sought a settlement. And until a deal was struck, Huntly could not leave China.

Huntly’s story is a daunting descent into isolation and surveillance. As weeks expand into months, Huntly seeks help from every contact he has, from lawyers and diplomats to assorted fixers, only to realize that the US Embassy won’t step in and corporate loyalty is nowhere to be found as the stakes increase. Desperate, he plans a covert escape with a private security firm. 

When the attempt is unsuccessful, police interrogations and threats of prison follow, and with it the frightening acknowledgment that China’s security state is aware of his every move. Part thriller, part history, part travelogue, and part policy exposé, Exit Banned peels back the curtain on a ruthless but little-known practice, one that continues to entrap Western executives.

As Congress finally takes notice and corporations warn against travel, Huntly’s experience lands not just as a memoir, but as a timely warning.