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China’s Communist Party
Economy

Global Impact: China’s state secrets revisions move to address ‘worst-case and most extreme scenarios’

  • Global Impact is a weekly curated newsletter featuring a news topic originating in China with a significant macro impact for our newsreaders around the world
  • In this issue, we look at the proposed revisions to China’s state secrets law

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In this issue of the Global Impact newsletter, we look at the proposed revisions to China’s state secrets law. Photo: AP
Sylvie Zhuangin Beijing
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Digging out forgotten laws from dusty shelves and freshening them up with some trendy security elements has become the latest fashion for Communist Party rulers in China.

It happened as President Xi Jinping called on officials to prepare for “worst-case and most extreme scenarios,” in other words, an unprecedented security threat posed by the United States and other Western powers.

Whether the threats are imaginary or more real than ever, scrambling to expand legal tool kits appears sensible to a Chinese leadership eager to rationalise its moves and defend itself from spies or other forms of external infiltration.

The latest law to be refashioned was China’s State Secrets Law. A dozen new clauses have been added in a draft revision unveiled in late October, the biggest amendment to the statute in over a decade after it was first introduced in 1988.

Education, technology and military facilities, among other areas, were all covered as the draft expanded the reach and depth of the law.

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