China

This risk does not arise principally from political causes, even though I have been criticizing the Chinese Communist Party in op-eds, interviews and books over the past two decades.

But wait, evil CCP??? Social credit score?? Was all of that meaningless? You mean posting against the CCP won't get you arrested??

China has taken on a reputation like Russia’s: that of a hostile land with a legal system subject to the whims of political leaders.

Most US state has a set of laws designed to persecute specific groups of people, and DAs have broad powers to prosecute or let people off based on their wealth or whiteness.

Under Chinese law, closing the company entailed paying more than a year’s salary each to a couple of people. They are honest and hard-working people who deserve to be paid, and we are doing that, but incrementally. Meanwhile, I could be prohibited from leaving the country until that debt is settled.

In bad country, you are liable for your debts to others

Visiting foreigners feel they are playing Russian roulette with their freedom the minute they step over the border.

Most are concerned about political missteps: Have they written something that could be construed as anti-China?

But you've been writing opeds openly against China for 20 years and you're fine to go back except for those pesky debts?

Australian mystery writer Yang Hengjun was detained when he flew to Guangzhou in 2019, then jailed for three years and given a suspended death sentence, apparently because of pro-democracy blogging (although he was accused of being a spy).

Sounds like he was arrested for being a spy, not for apparently blogging, because like you pointed out, you've been writing against China for 20 years and you're not worried.

Most commonly, foreigners are detained over a commercial dispute or debt. If a foreign company owes money to a Chinese company or individual, even a few thousand dollars, Chinese law often allows the purported creditor to seize anyone tangentially attached to the company and hold them in a guesthouse or hotel, with guards to prevent departure, until that debt is cleared. This is infuriating.

I've never amassed a debt of "even a few" thousands of dollars to a foreign company or individual, seems like a skill issue. Maybe don't try capital flight? Also, seems a lot less bad than going to jail for stealing money, which is what you've described yourself doing by not settling your debts.

Sometimes, people with only the most tenuous relationship to the company involved in a dispute are simply refused exit from China — a so-called exit ban. In March, the Wall Street Journal reported on an American who had been kept in China for more than six years following a dispute between his company’s head office and its Shanghai subsidiary.

You don't mention that he was an executive, not someone tenuously related to it.

Exit bans may be imposed on executives of large banks or asset-management companies based on a debt owed by a client firm.

Oh no! Consequences for the wealthy!

A particularly problematic aspect of exit bans is that the subject often does not know the ban exists. The U.S. State Department says: “In most cases, U.S. citizens only become aware of an exit ban when they attempt to depart the [People’s Republic of China], and there is no reliable mechanism or legal process to find out how long the ban might continue or to contest it in a court of law.”

How public is the no-fly list again? How do you remove your name from it? Are you put on it for financial crime or for being brown with a suspicious name?

Many Chinese companies resent what my company does: deep research into listed businesses that commit fraud. Corruption operates much more blatantly at the local than the national level, and it can be easy for a big company in a small city or town to buy the complicity of police and courts.

Quick google reveals that our author is the cofounder of J Capital Research, which is an activist research firm which provides investment advice, mostly around which firms should be shorted. Of course they'd be resentful, but don't pretend that buying the courts is unique to China, where judges can be elected at the local level and even the supreme court is wholly owned by special interests. Blatant corruption? Look homewards.

It feels as though a family matter ought to be sheltered from the political winds chilling China’s relationship with the West

This isn't a political matter, you stole money from your employees and owe them a debt.

the Chinese government has long viewed entering or leaving the country as a privilege that only it can bestow

That's what sovereignty is and every country has that "privilege". What kind of bullshit framing is this?