Changes to espionage laws and imposing bans on people leaving China pose increased risks for visitors, including professionals, business executives, and scholars.
The Xinhua news agency reported that Chinese lawmakers voted a week ago to adopt a revised Counter-Espionage Law, which will take effect on July 1, 2023.
The revised law was passed at the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee session.
Adopted in November 2014, the current Counter-Espionage Law regulates and “safeguards” the fight against espionage, which plays an important role in safeguarding national security, said Wang Aili with the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee.
The law, which previously covered state secrets, does not define what falls under Beijing’s national interests.
The revised law expands the definition of espionage, specifying acts such as carrying out cyber-attacks against state organs, confidential organs, or crucial information infrastructure as acts of espionage.
It also expands the scope of targets of espionage, with all documents, data, materials, and articles concerning national security and interests included for protection, Wang said.
The revised law allows authorities carrying out an anti-espionage investigation to gain access to data, electronic equipment, and information on personal property and also to ban border crossings.
This includes access to mobile phones and laptops.
This vague, wide-ranging extension to the laws heightens the risks for foreigners in China, especially anyone collecting, creating, using or processing data—in other words, many providers of business services.
Typical business activities, such as gathering commercial information, are potentially caught by the laws.
Even before the new laws, foreign firms have been targeted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The Shanghai office of the global management consulting firm Bain & Co was raided recently and its staff interrogated.
This follows similar actions against Deloitte and Mintz, two other global firms. Five Beijing Chinese employees of the Mintz Group, a major legal firm involved in corporate analysis, due diligence, and corruption investigations, were arrested.
In 2013, a British corporate investigator, Peter Humphrey and his American wife, who operated ChinaWhys, a risk consultancy business, were arrested after working for the pharmaceutical company GSK. They were eventually released after some two years of imprisonment.
“I am aware of other, smaller western consultancies currently being harassed which are not yet in the news,” Humphrey wrote after news of the actions against Bain & Co.
China has also failed to renew subscriptions of foreign entities to Wind, an information company that provides databases of corporate registrations, patents, procurement documents, as well as official statistics.
Expanding Control Domestically and Overseas
The report “Trapped: China’s expanding use of exit bans” deploys official data and provides an examination of the new laws.China has also approved amendments that will allow exit bans on anyone under investigation (Chinese and foreigners) deemed a potential national security risk.
Between 2018 and July of this year, no less than five new or amended laws provide for the use of exit bans, for a new total of at least 15 laws.
“Dozens of foreigners are also being prevented from leaving China if they work for a company that is involved in a civil dispute. Deliberately vague wording in the Civil Procedure Law means that individuals not even connected to the dispute can be trapped in China.”
Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran was barred from leaving China for more than three years (2019 to 2022) because the company he worked for was involved in a commercial dispute, even though he wasn’t even working for the firm when the dispute began.
Time to Ratchet Up the Travel Risk Guide
In some cases, the targeting of foreigners is part of Beijing’s hostage diplomacy, a tit-for-tat retaliation aimed at a foreign government or a tactic to extract concessions. Often, the action is more serious, such as arbitrary detention, or sometimes exit bans are used in the initial stages.In December 2018, two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested in China in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Canada.
Kovrig was a former Canadian diplomat and advisor for the International Crisis Group, and Spavor was a consultant working on North Korea. They were indicted under Beijing’s vague state secret law.
When Meng was released after agreeing to a deferred prosecution deal relating to bank and wire fraud charges in the U.S., the two Michaels were released.
The reality under the CCP is that lawyers, judges, and courts are agents of the regime.
In a directive by the Central Committee of the CCP, published in February, law schools, lawyers, and judges were instructed to “oppose and resist Western erroneous views such as ‘constitutional government,’ ‘separation of three powers,’ and the ‘independence of the judiciary.’”
Two prominent human rights lawyers, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, were recently sentenced to more than a decade in jail after being convicted of subversion of state power after secret trials.
Not that trials in China are impartial with a conviction rate of over 99 percent!
For several years now, the U.S. State Department’s travel advisory on China has warned that Beijing uses exit bans to “gain bargaining leverage over foreign governments.”
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs merely advises travellers to China to “exercise a high degree of caution.”
It is perhaps time that the advice was updated to reflect the increased risks involved in visiting China.
