12/5/2023 0 Comments China counter espionage lawState security organs should work with relevant departments to formulate and regularly adjust the list of key units with crucial responsibilities to guard against espionage acts, according to the regulations. The regulations are formulated to ensure specific duties of various authorities and entities in preventing espionage activities are performed and to enhance the capacity of society, especially core areas, in ensuring state security, the official said. Overseas espionage and intelligence agencies and hostile forces have intensified infiltration into China, and broadened their tactics of stealing secrets in various ways and in more fields, which poses a serious threat to China's national security and interests, according to a senior official with the ministry. The new law will also proscribe espionage in China that targets a third country and will punish PRC nationals who while abroad allow themselves to be used by an espionage organization.China's Ministry of State Security on Monday issued regulations on counter-espionage security work, which take effect upon promulgation. And officials are admonished, of course, to take “a holistic view of national security” in applying the terms of the law. The new law will protect not only state secrets and intelligence but all “other documents, data, statistics, materials and other items related to national security”. Acts of espionage will now include “seeking to align with an espionage organization and its agents”. The anticipated amendments to the espionage law add to the already breathtaking breadth of its provisions. Will it be the local Communist Party Political-Legal Committee? The organs of the Ministry of State Security? Or the recently-established National Supervisory Commission and its agents? And how meaningful is it to state that espionage cases are subject to law when the Criminal Procedure Law allows criminal investigators to detain a suspect incommunicado for six months before a decision is made to initiate conventional criminal procedures and when in espionage cases those procedures are applied in blatant denial of basic due process rights? Third, it is unclear which of the relevant legal institutions will exercise the most power over enforcement of the law. Second, speculation about how the vague terms in the amended law will actually be interpreted and applied should await promulgation of a new set of Detailed Implementing Rules as well as regional and local regulations. But no one should be foolish enough to rely on the paper protections of human rights in this legislation or the PRC’s other provisions relating to criminal justice. It is encouraging to see that the forthcoming law will be amended to protect “individuals”, i.e., including foreigners, rather than only “citizens”. ![]() Despite their actions cloaked in secrecy, many cases of lawless action eventually become known to the public and to foreigners, as recent cases again illustrate. The first thing to keep in mind about the amendments to the counter-espionage law – and any law in the PRC – is that the secret police are free to ignore it when they deem it desirable to do so.
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