The plight and uncertainty according to this teen (whose family has been exit banned by the Chinese authorities) may and will become another lightning rod and issue that western governments will be pressured to take action against China.
I am not exactly sure what the heck is happening with these teens and their mother as they're claiming being banned from exiting Mainland China. The reasons for why and for what reasons have been kept in secret - per the family's allegations.
Her other videos have more views which have prompted both the U.S. and Canadian government to take actions on their behalf.
I don't think this is a big deal, I watched the video and
- her family isn't barred from exiting, only her mom is. The Canadian and American kids can leave whenever they want. And the nationality of her mom isn't specificed (maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think she specified her nationality), so she could be a Chinese national. A Chinese national being barred from leaving mainland China by mainland Chinese authorities is a Chinese matter (and other countries also engage in doing the same thing to people of interest), it doesn't have much to do with Canada or any other country.
- the last examples of foreign nationals I remember getting exit banned from China were a Wells Fargo executive, an ex-US Chamber of Commerce official, and a businessperson whose business in China went defunct and they refused to pay their employees severance (so they were barred from leaving until they paid severance). Chinese exit bans aren't broadly applied or arbitrary, they usually have some sort of rationale behind them. If the exit ban is justifiable then is it enough to create an international incident?
Anyway, these kinds of videos where they immediately act like they're being victimized without justification rub me the wrong way. We don't fully know what their mother did, and foreign nationals (myself included) go to China all the time and nothing happens to them, so to immediately conclude that the Chinese government is in the wrong here is not reasonable, but this is my own view. Plenty of other people who are predisposed and told to fear the Chinese government and the CCP will think differently and will immediately side with the family here regardless.
