I think that's an exaggeration. Here's an example I found of a British person in China who did this. Seems like he got a week in jail, then deported.

https://www.newsweek.com/english-teacher-overstayed-visa-des...

This is just totally untrue about how China deals with foreign nationals. They're tracked, they have significant disadvantages in civil courts, there are a bunch of other restrictions on their presence... but just disappearing Americans or South Koreans is not the sort of issue China has. They have an intense bureaucracy and foreign workers are comparatively rare & their existence geopolitically sensitive; Court cases involving foreigners are expedited and jail stays are short before deportation.

Outside of very specific campaigns (eg Xinjiang) or internal Party processes, it's generally not even a problem that China has with Chinese nationals; Most people who cross over the line into something the government cannot stomach get a scary visit, or get obvious monitoring, or get a couple weeks confinement for investigation. Dissident status can have significant consequences for one's career. On the off chance it leads to adjudication (there are far lower rates of use of the justice system than the US, and arguably far lower crime rates, but we could say that about most countries), there is a public facing justice system just like we have.

The people "disappearing" into a shadow justice system are those who voluntarily sign up for Party membership, a selective process more like enlisting in the military than listing your affiliation on a voter card. Turning against the Party in a significant way after joining the Party, typically ends up with some limited term of "rehabilitation", but a lot more earnest use of that terminology than our justice system uses.

The fact is that the American system in 2025 is far more brutal, deliberately so. We literally stole children from families over immigration violations, and then "lost" them. We're setting up internment camps. We have court dates for legitimate immigration processes like asylum that are years or decades out.

Did it actually say they were violating terms of their visas?