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Chinese authorities are demanding that a growing number of schoolteachers and other public sector employees hand in their passports as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on society.

The passport collection drive, carried out under what is known as “personal travel abroad management”, allows local government officials to control and monitor who can travel abroad, how often and to where.

It comes as Xi steps up state involvement in everyday life and clamps down on official corruption. China’s powerful state security apparatus has also intensified its campaign against foreign espionage.

Interviews with more than a dozen Chinese public sector workers and notices from education bureaus in half a dozen cities show restrictions on international travel have been greatly expanded from last year to include rank-and-file employees of schools, universities, local governments and state-owned groups.

“All teachers and public sector employees were told to hand in our passports,” said a primary school teacher in a major city in the western province of Sichuan.

“If we want to travel abroad, we have to apply to the city education bureau and I don’t think it will be approved,” said the teacher, asking that they and their city not be named.

Teachers in Yichang in the central province of Hubei and in another city in neighbouring Anhui province told the Financial Times they had also been told to hand in their travel documents. This summer, in the weeks ahead of the school year start, educators in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Henan provinces complained on social media of being forced to hand in their travel documents.

“I was an English major, my life-long dream is to visit an English-speaking country, but it feels like that is about to be shattered,” posted one Henan teacher to social media site Xiaohongshu.

The passport collection appears to be based on national regulations from 2003 that established a system to restrict travel for key personnel such as mid- to high-level officials and allowed local authorities to set rules for all state employees’ international travel.

Residents of restive regions such as Tibet lost their freedom to travel more than a decade ago. Starting in the mid-2010s, some areas applied “personal travel abroad management” rules to local teachers. Last year, after pandemic-era travel restrictions were lifted, more education bureaus began to introduce teacher travel restrictions and stepped them up this summer.

China’s ruling Communist party has long prioritised instilling loyalty in students and has made the political education of teachers central to those efforts. Pre-travel instructions for teachers in the eastern city of Wenzhou indicates local authorities are concerned about the ideas they would encounter outside the country.

Educators travelling abroad must not have contact with the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement or other “hostile foreign forces”, according to instructions published by Wenzhou’s Ouhai district education bureau in March on the district’s website along with the new teacher travel restrictions.

The district demanded that all public pre-school, primary school and secondary school teachers hand in their passports and said their names would be registered with the public security bureau’s border control unit.

To travel abroad, teachers must file applications with their schools and would generally be restricted to a single trip of less than 20 days each year, the district notice said.

Teachers who refused to hand in their passports or who travelled abroad without permission would be subject to “criticism and education” or referred to China’s anti-corruption authority, depending on the severity of their case, the notice said. Offenders would also be barred from travel for two to five years.

The restrictions on staff at state-owned enterprises appear to be connected to a growing campaign to root out foreign espionage.

An entry-level salesperson at a bank in Nanjing said she was told to hand in her passport when she joined the state-owned group last year. After quitting in March, she had to wait six months for a “de-secrecy process” before she was able to retrieve it.

In central Hunan province, a mid-level official at a local government investment fund said he gained approval from nine different departments for a holiday abroad but still could not retrieve his passport. 

“No one would tell me what exactly was needed to get my passport back,” he said.

The restrictions are hitting retirees as well. A 76-year-old who retired from a state-owned aircraft maker more than 10 years ago said his former employer took his passport back this year for “security reasons” and barred him from visiting family abroad.

“I have no access to sensitive information and I am a patriot,” he said. “My former employer has no reason to keep me from visiting my grandson.”

China’s foreign ministry said it was not aware of the situation and referred questions to the relevant authorities. The education bureaus in Sichuan, Yichang, Anhui, Wenzhou, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Henan did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Tina Hu in Beijing

A MAJOR supermarket has announced that one lucky shopper has the chance to win free shopping for a year – here’s how.

To win, customers must write no more than 250 words explaining why they deserve to receive the ultimate gift.

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Aldi has confirmed the launch of its first-ever Superfan Card for one lucky fan who will receive free shopping for an entire year.

Judges at the bargain supermarket chain will review all the submissions before choosing who will hold the exclusive card.

To be eligible, candidates must be aged 18 or over.

Applicants must explain why they are Aldi’s biggest superfan to have a chance at winning.

Aspiring winners must send their letters to aldicompetitions@citypress.co.uk, including their name, age, and location.

Shoppers have until October 31 at 11.59pm to apply for the Superfan Card, and one lucky customer will be notified about their win on November 30.

Richard Thornton, Communications Director at Aldi, said: “We know how passionate our customers are about Aldi, and we wanted to find a way to give something truly special back to Aldi’s biggest fan.

“We can’t wait to see the creativity and enthusiasm in the entries. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we’re thrilled to be launching it.”

The iconic discount retailer recently had shoppers racing to their nearest branch to get their hands on a popular Toblerone dupe that returned to shelves.

The blonde bar is seen as a family favourite with happy customers describing it as “lush” as they race into stores to grab one.

Each 100g pack cost is now priced at £1.69.

Each bar is packed with delicious ingredients from white chocolate, honey, almond, nougat and salted caramel pieces.

An actual bar of normal Toblerone will set you back a hefty amount with the smallest offering being a 200g bar for £4 at Tesco.

However, if you want the white chocolate version like Aldi’s alternative then it will cost you a whopping £6 for a 360g bar.

The bars were last seen in November 2023 but seemingly vanished after winter leaving shoppers gutted to believe they were a Christmas treat only.

But with it being restocked already sweet-toothed fans are raving about its return.

A picture of the bar back on shelves was shared on social media with one happy shopper saying: “This looks amazing!!!”

As another simply wrote: “That looks lush!”

While a third added: “How yummy does this look.”

How to save money at Aldi

Unlike other major grocers, Aldi does not have a rewards or point card system but that does not mean you cannot save on your shop. 

Every week the store releases a list of special buys, which are unique bargain products you find online at Aldi and in-store. 

The store releases a fresh range of deals every Thursday and Sunday, so be sure to check regularly to see what’s new. 

Meanwhile, the store also regularly sells fruit and vegetables at highly discounted prices, as part of its ‘super six’ deal.

It also does weekly saving offers on typically pricey items such as meat and fish.

SHOPPERS have been left thrilled after discovering a £2.49 stocking filler that is the perfect dupe of an iconic perfume.

Customers at B&M are starting to fill up their baskets with Missy G.G. body mist with many raving that is smells just like the £47 Carolina Herrera good girl spray.

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The bargain supermarket sells the perfume brand V.V. Love with the Missy G.G. body mist being a favourite of many shoppers.

B&M list the product online saying: “Feel fresh, fragrant and inspired each day with the V.V Love Body Mist 250ml – Missy G.G.

“With its portable bottle size, you can freshen up throughout the day – no matter where you are.”

They also sell a Royal Sweety scent by V.V. Love.

The bargain find was spotted in store and shared on social media by a happy shopper.

She posted a picture of the bottle with the caption: “Carolina Herrera good girl body spray dupe £2.49 from B&M smells exactly the same as the original it’s beautiful.

“Had other dupes too perfect stocking fillers for Xmas.”

The iconic Good Girl body mist has been a staple in women’s handbags for years for its luxurious bright jasmine and rich cocoa scent.

But it will set back customers a whopping £47 for just 100ml.

Meaning dupe lovers can get their hands on the alternative for £44.51 less.

Shoppers rushed to react to the wonderful find online with one commenting under the original post saying: “I need this lol.”

Another heaped on praise for how similar it smelled to the Carolina Herrera spray: “I got this yesterday from my local B&M and it smells exactly like it.”

As a third told their pal: “Omg please keep a lookout!”

Many bargain stores are starting to sell dupe alternatives of popular branded products at a hugely reduced price.

A beloved Sol De Janeiro dupe has hit Lidl shelves with it costing a fraction of the price of the original version at just £4.

Lidl is one of the best around as dropping a number of home and beauty dupes.

Dupe hunters have unearthed Jo Malone, Rituals, Moulton Brown, Sol de Janeiro and Lush copycats in stores across the country.

There’s even a £1.99 dupe of the coveted Jo Malone London Pomegranate Noir Body & Hand Wash.

The designer version will set you back a mammoth £36.

How to bag a bargain

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SUN Savers Editor Lana Clements explains how to find a cut-price item and bag a bargain…

Sign up to loyalty schemes of the brands that you regularly shop with.

Big names regularly offer discounts or special lower prices for members, among other perks.

Sales are when you can pick up a real steal.

Retailers usually have periodic promotions that tie into payday at the end of the month or Bank Holiday weekends, so keep a lookout and shop when these deals are on.

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Sign up to mailing lists and you’ll also be first to know of special offers. It can be worth following retailers on social media too.

When buying online, always do a search for money off codes or vouchers that you can use vouchercodes.co.uk and myvouchercodes.co.uk are just two sites that round up promotions by retailer.

Scanner apps are useful to have on your phone. Trolley.co.uk app has a scanner that you can use to compare prices on branded items when out shopping.

Bargain hunters can also use B&M’s scanner in the app to find discounts in-store before staff have marked them out.

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And always check if you can get cashback before paying which in effect means you’ll get some of your money back or a discount on the item.

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The head of the US agency coordinating relief efforts for Hurricane Helene attacked “dangerous” disinformation as she rejected claims by Donald Trump that there was no money for storm victims because it had been spent on illegal migrants.

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” said Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell in an ABC interview.

“You know, it’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people and that’s what we’re here to do.”

Criswell said rampant misinformation had created “a truly dangerous narrative” that instils “fear” both in those trying to help and those seeking it.

“People need resources, and we need them to get into the system,” said Criswell. “It’s just, you know, a shame that people are sitting — sitting home on their comfortable couches — while we have thousands of people here on the ground that have left their own families to be able to help those in need.”

Hurricane Helene has ravaged the south-east of the US and left at least 227 dead, according to the Associated Press. Fema says it has already spent $110mn in federal assistance to provide food, water and electricity to victims.

Kamala Harris and Trump have travelled to Georgia and North Carolina, two crucial swing states devastated by Helene, to witness recovery efforts.

The Republican presidential nominee has compared those efforts to the widely panned response by the George W Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that killed 1,392 people.

Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania on Saturday night that Helene was Harris’ “Katrina” moment.

At a rally in Michigan on October 3, Trump said the Biden/Harris administration “stole the Fema money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them.”

“This is the worst response in the history of hurricanes.”

Fact-checkers at the Washington Post noted that in 2019 the Trump administration drew $271mn from Department of Homeland Security programmes, including $155mn for disaster relief, to pay for services for asylum seekers.

In a plea for additional money from Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said this week that Fema would meet “immediate needs” but that the agency he oversees did not have enough money to make it through hurricane season.

Criswell on Sunday said that Fema is “absolutely ready” for the next storm; Tropical Storm Milton is forecast to “intensify” to be “at or near major hurricane strength” when it hits Florida this week, according to the National Hurricane Center. 

The Trump campaign has claimed that Fema spent so much paying for migrant housing that it could only afford to give $750 to disaster survivors.

“They’re offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away and yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of,” said Trump at the campaign rally Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he survived an assassination attempt in July.

Fema has set up a “rumour page” to reject the claim, urging people to apply both for Serious Needs Assistance, which provides that cash, and others.

Trump has also claimed without evidence that North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has steered aid clear of Republican areas.

Elon Musk, a Trump backer who spoke at the Butler rally, has echoed Trump’s falsehoods on his platform X. He recently told his 200mn followers that Fema has committed “treason” using “up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives”.

Josh Hallgreen, a Trump supporter who attended the rally, said that when the candidate was president “things were taken care of a hell of a lot quicker.”

He criticised the Biden/Harris administration’s “lack of response to the disasters . . . between the wars that are going on overseas and the hurricane”.

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SMYTHS fans are raving after a savvy shopper spotted an amazing discount code that helps parents get £10 off Christmas presents.

The popular toy brand has already launched its Christmas collection, featuring a range of brand-new products.

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An eagle-eyed shopper revealed that Smyths customers can get £5 or £10 on their next big shop.

The discount is available for those buying toys online or in-store and will run from Friday 4 to Wednesday 9.

Bosses have confirmed that shoppers will have only one opportunity to use the discount and added that it will be limited to one per household.

If a shopper decides to return the discounted item, they will only receive the cash value after the reduction has been applied.

For Smyths fans shopping in their stores, the code will automatically be enabled at checkout.

Online shoppers will also see the reduction instantly applied once they finish adding toys to their cart.

Shoppers who spend £50 or more will receive £5 off and those spending £100 or more will get £10 knocked off their receipt.

Smyths has more than 100 stores across the UK and you can find your nearest one by using the locator tool on its website.

The major toy retailer isn’t the only store filling their shelves with festive products.

A bargain supermarket is currently flogging the perfect £2 stocking filler in stores.

You’d be hard-pushed to find someone who wouldn’t love a Yankee Candle as a gift.

However, the designer homeware brand’s luxury candles can be a little pricey, with large jars costing £27.99.

So it’s no surprise that people are rushing to buy them in Lidl after spotting an incredible offer.

Alerting people to the deal, savvy shopper Joanne said: “Good size autumn Yankee candles £2.99 or two for £4 Lidl, bargain.”

So if you’re bagging more than one candle, it works out at just £2 each.

The 425g jars are available in a range of scents including caramel whirl, cinnamon spice, perfect pumpkin, apple orchard and cherry berry.

Joanne’s post on Extreme Couponing and Bargains UK, a private Facebook group with 2.5 million members, has sparked a frenzy with 2,000 likes and 2,400 comments.

And people are hailing them as the perfect Christmas presents.

“Alright for stocking filler”, gushed one.

A second echoed: “Good for Xmas gifts.”

A third wrote: “Need to get there asap lol.”

A fourth added: “These look amazing definitely need to get some.”

“If you happen to see any, get me 100”, a fifth begged a pal.

Meanwhile, a sixth said: “Omg need them all.”

It comes after Aldi and Lidl have confirmed the relaunch of their popular wooden toy range with prices starting at just £1.99.

And shoppers will be pleased to know one of Britain’s favourite bargain stores will be extending its opening hours to help shoppers over the Christmas period.

For 20-year-old Jamie Clarke, the chance to study at the UK’s top-flight Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry made reality of a dream that began as a boy, when his grandfather taught him how to make electrical circuits for remote control model cars.

After leaving college at 18, Clarke used that experience to help get selected for an apprenticeship with French-owned LISI Aerospace, a company in nearby Rugby that makes precision components for the aviation industry. 

“I never considered university. I don’t like being sat in an office, I like to get my hands dirty,” said Clarke, whose mother was a communications officer in the Royal Navy and father is a patternmaker, including for Formula One racing.

But Clarke’s gold standard, on-the-job training is available to far too few young people, according to the manufacturer’s organisation Make UK, thanks to years of chronic under-investment and failing skills policy.

The UK’s new Labour government is promising to radically change the skills and training landscape but has a mountain to climb after a decade in which training for entry-level apprentices declined across the board.

Between 2015 and 2024 the total number of apprenticeship starts fell by 45 per cent. The biggest decline was among young people with the number of under-25s starting apprenticeships falling 48 per cent to 149,000 over the same period, according to government data.

The number of engineering apprenticeship starts has dropped by 42 per cent since 2017 despite the previous Conservative government introducing an 0.5 per cent apprenticeship levy on businesses with salary bills of £3mn or more.

Budget choices

As chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver her budget on October 30, organisations such as Make UK and the Association of Colleges, the body that represents further education institutions that deliver many apprenticeships, want resources to be better focused on the sector.

Make UK chief executive Stephen Phipson said the primary reason for the collapse in engineering apprenticeships was the government’s failure to fund them at a level that made them economic for colleges and private training companies to deliver.

According to Make UK’s submission to the Treasury ahead of the Budget, government funding for a Level 3 (equivalent to A-level standard) apprenticeship in engineering is capped at £27,000 when they cost £36,000 a year to deliver. 

“The new government has committed to building a talent pipeline but this cannot happen with the current funding arrangements which are leading many training providers to simply walk away because it is basically uneconomic,” Phipson said.

Make UK said it was not asking for more money, but was instead urging Reeves to concentrate existing levy resources better, in order to fully finance the apprenticeship standards that support its “industrial strategy”.

However. there is strong competition from other sectors for limited resources, according to Tim Smith, a former government policy adviser who is now corporate affairs director with apprenticeship provider Multiverse. 

“One problem is there isn’t consensus around what matters,” he said. “The government also has other missions around the tech economy, healthcare and green skills that also link in to its industrial strategy.”

Reforming the levy

Sir Keir Starmer’s new Labour government has promised to remedy the failings of the existing levy by introducing a new “growth and skills levy” that will allow businesses more flexibility in the way they spend their contributions.

Industry is still awaiting details of how the new system will operate. A new body, Skills England, is consulting on how to reorder the training landscape as part of Labour’s overall industrial strategy, an early blueprint for which is promised at this month’s Budget.

Mark Capell, the managing director of LISI Aerospace, a company with 330 staff that has 23 apprentices, said any flexibility that helped it spend the levy more effectively would be welcome. The company currently only spends 45 per cent of what it pays in the levy — despite being heavily invested in the apprentices like Jamie Clarke.

Cappell said the company preferred training apprentices to hiring graduates because they were more likely to stay with the business when training was complete, but the current system was just proving too bureaucratic for many providers. 

“We’ve found that a lot of training providers that were around three or four years ago are no longer there. It’s no longer feasible to provide an accredited apprenticeship course, the bureaucracy is too difficult,” he added.

David Grailey, the chief executive of the MTC in Coventry, which was founded in 2010 as part of a network of research centres to support high-value manufacturing, said the centre’s provision was only made possible by £1mn in annual sponsorship from Lloyds Bank.

He added that the government needed to take steps to increase financial support for post-16 apprenticeships, in order to increase uptake among training providers. 

In an apparent tilt in that direction, Starmer said at Labour’s party conference last month that the government would introduce new “foundation apprenticeships” that he said would “rebalance funding in our training system back to young people”. 

As part of this, the government will also reduce or remove funding for many “Level 7” apprenticeships, which are equivalent to a masters degree, so that funds can be directed at earlier levels.

However, as well as targeting more entry-level apprenticeships, the government should also consider steps to increase the overall size of the pot, according to David Hughes, head of the Association of Colleges.

Total revenue from the levy is forecast to grow from £3.9bn to £4.6bn by 2029 as rising wage bills drag more businesses across the £3mn threshold to pay the levy, but adjusted for inflation that will still only represent an 8 per cent increase in real terms over that period.

“Employers in the UK spend less on their workforce than OECD countries and the levy, at 0.5 per cent, is quite low by international standards, there’s an argument it needs to increase in coming years,” Hughes added.