A revised law dramatically expanding China’s definition of espionage came into force on Saturday, giving Beijing more power than ever to punish what it deems threats to national security. The United States government, analysts, and lawyers say that the revisions to Beijing’s anti-espionage law are vague and will give authorities more leeway in implementing already opaque national security legislation. The changes have roiled the business community, with companies worried that even routine corporate activities could be deemed espionage. For example, last month, Chinese authorities shut down the Beijing office of the Mintz Group, a US corporate due diligence firm, and detained five local staff. In contrast, consulting firms Bain & Company and the American Chamber of Commerce in China said Chinese police had scrutinized them.
The revisions allow investigators to confiscate data, electronic equipment, and information on personal property and prohibit border crossings while conducting anti-espionage investigations. They also expand the scope of what constitutes espionage from a list of state secrets to any “documents, data, materials or items related to China’s national security and interests,” according to Xinhua, the state news agency. This ambiguity could put many foreign individuals, including academic researchers and journalists, at risk.
It’s part of a trend toward tighter control under President Xi Jinping, who has made national security the main focus of his administration since taking office in 2012. Suspicion of the United States and its allies is widespread in China, despite the country’s pledge to open up to international business.
The new law passed by the rubber-stamp parliament in January and formally approved by the country’s top legislative body in April has caused alarm among foreign officials and businesses. A US-China business council official warned that the law could make some “routine business activities,” such as corporate due diligence, illegal in China. The chairman of a Washington-based trade association said that the law would lead to fewer and fewer foreign executives wanting to set up operations in China.
A senior research fellow at Yale University Paul Tsai China Center, Jeremy Daum, told AFP that the new law “embodies a whole-of-society approach to dealing with anything that poses a threat to this broad definition of national security.” He said the revisions are part of a “trend towards tighter controls” that began in 2014 when President Xi took office.
The law comes just months after lifting China’s Covid-19 pandemic-era border restrictions, which had kept most foreign businesspeople and scholars from visiting or operating in China. A former US ambassador to China, Richard Rossow, said the new law would have a “chilling effect” on companies that may be discouraged from investing in the country or rethinking their plans to do so. A study by the nonprofit Safeguard Defenders found that 128 foreigners, primarily academics and activists, were slapped with arbitrary exit bans between 1995 and 2019, with almost all of them being convicted of espionage.
