China’s anti-terrorism law does what US, UK could only dream of

“It is this complexity that has caused us much delay in promulgating this law”. Once the new law takes effect, about 90 million of them are expected to have a second child. Instead, companies are required to provide “technical means of support” for anti-terror investigations, including decrypting data.

Chinese officials are becoming anxious about the increase in violence in China’s Western territories, where a group of Islamist separatists known under the name of East Turkestan have planned and carried out various attacks, as Reuters reports. Chinese President Xi Jinping said this month that cyber-scrutiny is necessary and urged nations to respect each others sovereignty over the Internet.

“This rule accords with the actual work need of fighting terrorism and is basically the same as what other major countries in the world do”.

Before the passage of the legislation, China did not have an anti-terrorism legislation, though related provisions feature in various NPC Standing Committee decisions, as well as the Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law and Emergency Response Law.

This will not affect the normal operation of tech companies and they have nothing to fear in terms of having “backdoors” installed or losing intellectual property rights, he added.

“To promote a balanced growth of population, China will continue to uphold the basic national policy of population control and improve its strategy on population development”, the Communist Party announced in October. The new intelligence center, in addition to coordinating between Chinese government bodies, will also coordinate “trans-regional efforts on counter-terrorism intelligence and information”, according to Xinhua.

Besides the encryption key handover procedures that the new anti-terror law includes, Chinese military forces have now gained the authority to carry out anti-terrorism actions outside the country’s borders.

Rights groups, though, doubt the existence of a cohesive militant group in Xinjiang and say the unrest mostly stems from anger among the region’s Muslim Uighur people over restrictions on their religion and culture.