China's broad new security laws target 'cultural infiltration,' cybersecurity
China yesterday passed its most sweeping and explicit national security laws since the Mao Zedong-era, part of President Xi Jinping鈥檚 ongoing project to centralize power and control in the Communist Party and to eliminate dissent.
The laws are the first of three sets of security legislation, closely watched in the West, that make 鈥渧igilance over security鈥� a primary emphasis across China鈥檚 vast systems of party and government, including its military and police.
The laws bolster Beijing's recent emphasis on a 鈥渓egal鈥� regime of party-state authority that covers all aspects of society, culture, and foreign policy, including China鈥檚 recent island-building in the Pacific and cyberspace.
The laws appear poised to restrict forms of foreign investment and NGO activity, allow quick arrests on grounds of 鈥渟ecurity,鈥� and quash free expression and social media. Officials stressed a need to 鈥渃arry forth the exceptional culture of the Chinese nationality鈥� and to route out 鈥渃ultural infiltration.鈥�
Zheng Shuna, deputy director of a National People鈥檚 Congress committee that passed the law Wednesday, said without elaborating that China鈥檚 security situation is 鈥渋ncreasingly grim鈥� and 鈥渕ore complicated than at any other time in history,鈥� , though she also stressed in other comments that China is open for normal business and trade.
The legislation seems the clearest signal to date of China鈥檚 official shift from the relatively free-wheeling days of openness that ran from the end of the Deng Xiaoping era in the early 1990s to the Hu Jintao era a few years ago.
President Xi, since 2013, has reined in competing centers of power and wealth in China through an anticorruption campaign, and has cracked down on civil society, the arts, faith communities, university professors, and avenues of foreign influence and 鈥淲estern values.鈥�
Jerome Cohen, a legal scholar at New York University and China-watcher for many years, said the laws 鈥渞eflect the party鈥檚 determination to create a garrison state,鈥� in a description聽. He called聽them聽鈥渁n ideological platform that guides domestic and foreign policies.鈥澛�
In June, during the rollout of the legislation, Joerg Wuttke of the European Union Chamber of Commerce similarly called the legislation a 鈥渕assive national security overreach.鈥�
While Chinese authorities said the legislation covered the autonomous region of Hong Kong, they said the laws would not be applied there. The Hong Kong government, already embattled after a year of democracy activism, released a statement today that the laws would not be taken up on its territory.
China included Taiwan in its stated scope of security laws, which the Mainland Affairs Council authority in Taipei described today as 鈥渞ude.鈥�
The laws promulgated this week sketch out a broad conceptual basis for two coming packages of more specific rules. :听
...places a particular emphasis on cybersecurity and the Internet, stressing the need to bolster the nation鈥檚 IT systems and network defenses and asserting 鈥渃yberspace sovereignty鈥� over the Internet in China. Information systems and data in key sectors must be "secure and controllable," it says.
The U.S. has accused China of conducting commercial espionage against American businesses and Chinese hackers are suspected in a recent major infiltration of U.S. government personnel databases. But China has categorically rejected such allegations and says it is a constant victim of cyber-attacks itself.
