China passes controversial counter-terrorism law

Asked at a news conference whether this covered gay couples, Guo Linmao, a member of the Legislative Affairs Commission of parliament’s standing committee, said the law had been formulated in response to specific problems discovered.

Washington has expressed concerns about the law’s likely impact on tech businesses and freedom of speech.

Among other things, the new law requires that telecom operators and Internet service providers give “technical support and assistance, including decryption”, to police and national security authorities, according to Xinhua.

They said lawmakers balanced the needs to fight terrorism and to protect business interests and public rights. Last month, the government in Xinjiang said Chinese security forces had killed 28 people who were accused of orchestrating an attack on a coal mine that killed 16 people. “The general definition in Chinese law needs to be expanded”.

The anti-terrorism law is also applicable to other provinces including Tibet which in the past witnessed over 120 self-immolations against tightening of security controls.

“This new law sees us make some progress, but in a slow way”, said Liu Bohong, a senior researcher with the Women’s Studies Institute of China.

Technology companies could face a worrisome wrinkle for their operations in China with the arrival of a law meant to combat terrorists.

The draft law, which could require technology firms to install “back doors” in products or hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government, has also been criticised by some Western business groups.

China’s Great Hall of the People is decked in red flags ahead of an assembly of the country’s legislature.

The law’s passage follows several bouts of ethnic violence, including the stabbing of 29 people at a Kunming train station in March 2014 and an attack on a Xinjiang coal mine in September.

“Those kinds of restrictive practices I think would, ironically, hurt the Chinese economy over the long term”, Obama said in March, “because I don’t think there’s any US or European firm, any worldwide firm, that could credibly get away with that wholesale turning over of data, personal data, over to a government”.

The Chinese government is keen that the undoubtedly tough measures it takes there are viewed as “counter-terrorism” (similar to measures taken by Western countries) rather than as the oppression of an ethnic minority.

Li, the criminal law expert with the National People’s Congress, insisted that the new law was no reason for multinationals to be alarmed.

On Sunday, the legislators also approved legal changes to put in place China’s new policy, announced in late October, allowing all married couples to have two children, replacing the decades-old rule that restricted most urban couples to one child.