China to strengthen consular protection for citizens

China will strengthen preventive consular protection for its citizens, said Huang Ping, general director of the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, in a seminar hosted by the Anhui Foreign Affairs Office.

Preventive consular protection, as its name suggests, refers to avoiding or reducing harm by giving early warnings, publicity, education and training to citizen overseas or planning to travel abroad.

"With the growing number of outbound visits, the risk of oversea accidents touching on Chinese citizens or enterprises has been on the rise. Political unrest, unstable public security, frequent disasters, terrorism and the like all constitute threats to Chinese citizens or overseas enterprises," Huang said.

The department of consular affairs adheres to a policy of improving emergency responses and preventing threats.

"We have cooperated with the Ministry of Education since 2010. Overseas safety education is now a required course for government-funded overseas students. Each year, more than 10,000 students from nearly 30 colleges and universities attend lectures on overseas safety, and the scale is expanding," Huang said.

"For overseas enterprises, we are making efforts by holding overseas security risk forums, facilitating external staff training and launching security patrols."

"We try to avoid anyone going overseas without any training," Huang said.

Statistics show Chinese nationals made more than 80 million outbound visits in 2012. By conservative estimates, that number will exceed 100 million in 2015. In addition, about 20,000 Chinese companies with total assets of more than $1.6 trillion are located in more than 170 countries and regions globally.