On Wednesday, China's legislature passed legislation that reinforces government controls over Internet infrastructure and the cyberspace. China's leaders try to address what they call a growing threat to Chinese national security and networks. However, for the Chinese Internet users, this is nothing else but a new step towards increasing censorship over the freedom of expression and access to information coming from the Western world.
China declares it is a major target of cyberattacks and hacking. The Chinese ruling Communist Party has expended vast efforts and resources in its attempt of blocking online content, which is considered as illegal or subversive. While the government declares its concern for hacking and cyberattacks against Chinese strategic interests and objectives, China is accused on its turn of running a state-sponsored campaign to hack computers and steal commercial and government secrets overseas. The Chinese government is also accused of harassing and spying on Tibetan, pro-democracy, and human rights groups based in the country as well as in different parts of the world.
Recently, Beijing was involved in a scandal around a massive hack into the America's federal government computer server and it is suspected as the one behind the attack that resulted in theft of security clearance and personal records of 14 million contractors and employees for the US federal service.
As usual, Chinese officials denied any involvement in the incident and declared that China never engages in such actions.
The new Chinese National Security Law is just one of several new regulatory moves that worry foreign businesses and privacy advocates. The Chinese new law calls for strengthened governmental control over the web and tougher measures against spread of harmful or illegal information, theft of secrets, and online attacks. In order to protect China's sovereignty over its cyberspace, the law calls for making critical infrastructure, core information technology, and important data and systems more "secure and controllable".
While the new law is not offering much details on how China would achieve the goals, a government Internet monitoring system has been already in place for years. The new National Security Law comes to replace a previous law focused narrowly on counter-espionage. This new legislation, in addition to cyberspace, also covers a wide range of areas, including territorial integrity, social stability, economy, finance, culture, the military, environment, technology, and food safety.
Spokeswoman for Chinese government, Zheng Shu'na, declared for the official Xinhua News Agency that this overarching legislation was needed in order to deal with new security challenges as well as to defend Chinese development interests, sovereignty, security, and social stability.
From a Western point of view, the new law is just an extension of the hard line against foreign ideological subversion. In the meantime, many foreign companies worry that the new legislation could undermine their ability to operate their business in China, by stopping them from using secure private corporate networks or encrypted emails.
