China passes law to restrict exports of sensitive technology
- Legislation follows rising tensions with US that has seen tech companies targeted by Washington
- Details of law have yet to be made public, but proposals are intended to protect national security
China’s top legislature passed a law to restrict the export of sensitive goods, services and technologies on Saturday.
The final version of the legislation has not yet been made public, but draft proposals published in June said the law was designed to protect national security by regulating the export of sensitive items that appear on a control list.
The Export Control Law comes amid escalating tensions with the United States and state broadcaster CCTV reported that it will come into force in December.
During the final review of the legislation, Ouyang Changqiong, a delegate to the National People’s Congress, proposed that the law should explicitly cover areas such as source codes and algorithms, state-owned Legal Daily reported.
Another delegate Zhang Yesui said that the law should strengthen protections for technologies such as 5G and quantum communications, where China was a world leader.
“In a very practical sense, it is an incremental move down the road that both China and the United States have been on for quite some time,” said Nathaniel Rushforth, an American lawyer and cybersecurity specialist at Shanghai-based DaWo Law Firm.