National security law

The Real Danger of China’s National Intelligence Law

Not enough can be said about the insidious and pervasive power of China’s National Intelligence Law, which came into effect in July 2017.

This may be one of the reasons that Communist Party legal authorities are attempting to defend the law in the international media. Dr. Gu Bin, of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, writes in his opinion piece in the Financial Times that “Western fears of party influence on Chinese companies are overblown.”

Gu attempts to reassure the world that China’s National Intelligence Law, “in particular Article 7,” is “often misunderstood.” But amid rising concerns about the long and deep reach of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into Chinese telecommunications and other Chinese-owned and operated companies around the world, Gu may have inadvertently encouraged readers to arrive at exactly the opposite conclusion.

Article 7 of the law, Gu writes, creates the “obligation of Chinese citizens to support national intelligence work.” However, “it does not authorize pre-emptive spying; national intelligence work must be defensive in nature.”

Thus, in so many words, a leading CCP law professor acknowledges that the law does indeed oblige citizens to spy on one another — the only question is at what point in the process the spying can legally begin.