China is cracking down on its citizens who try to leave the country to join Jihadist groups abroad, reports Global Times.

Southwestern China has seen an increase in people illegally crossing the border into Vietnam and Myanmar over the past two years, according to officials. Police say that  that many Chinese who have managed to sneak out of the country have participated in underground Islamic preaching, or have been involved in terrorist attacks.

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And some of these people are so gung-ho about jihad that they are willing to pay tens of thousands of yuan to reach the Middle East from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Liu Huaming, deputy head of the criminal investigation detachment under the public security bureau of Fangchenggang, Guangxi, said that the illegal emigrants spend between 30,000 and 50,000 yuan ($4,820-8,000) for their whole trip.

According to Global Times, the police say the activities are directed by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which encourages Chinese citizens  sympathetic to their cause to carry out attacks within China   if they can't make it across the border.

"In recent years external forces have persuaded people with extreme religious views to go abroad and fight," an official from the Criminal Investigation Department at the Ministry of Public Security, told the Global Times.

A complex network helping Chinese get out of the country to the Middle East was discovered after China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) established a task force in April, comprised of local police from Henan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guangxi and Xinjiang.  The task force is working to prevent Chinese citizens from illegally crossing the country's southwestern borders.

Police say that these networks are responsible for organizing people in China and helping them cross into Vietnam or Myanmar.

Officials boast that the task force has busted more than 30 such networks since May 2014. One network, led by a man named Wei Hai in Guangxi, attempted to smuggle 300 people out of China between over a four-month period early last year.

Wei confessed to police that a man named Eli Emet in Vietnam would get him to transport people to the Vietnamese border at night, whereupon someone would smuggle them across the border. Emet would then help them to leave Vietnam, according to Wei.

TagsBeijing Cracks Down on Chinese Leaving to Join Jihad, Islamist jihad, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, East Turkistan Islamic Movement, ETIM, Vietnam, Myanmar, terrorist activities