An education campaign for the Counter-Espionage Law in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu Province on November 1, 2023 Photo: CFP

 
China's newly revised Counter-Espionage Law puts its target on only a few espionage activities that threaten the national security. The law is not aimed at normal business activities and won't impact foreign enterprises' legitimate investment and operations in China, the Ministry of State Security said on Wednesday, in a response to some misunderstanding about the law.

The revised Counter-Espionage Law is more precise, clear-cut and transparent, which embodies progress in China's legal system, the ministry said in a statement on its WeChat account.

Security is imperative for development and the foundation for maintaining an open and stable business environment, the statement said. It's a common and legitimate practice for countries to enforce laws against espionage activities and maintain national security, it said. Those people who hype up the law damaging business environment in China have ulterior motives and are seeking to talk black into white, it said.

The nature of the market economy is an economy ruled by law, and a clear and transparent legal system is the fundamental guarantee for investment and business operation, the ministry said, noting that one important purpose of the amended law is to clarify the boundary of legal and illegal operations, and help enterprises better operate in line with Chinese laws.

China is committed to high-level opening up, and has implemented multiple laws and regulations such as Foreign Investment Law in order to build a world-class, market-oriented business environment governed by a sound legal system, the statement said.

At this year's China International Import Expo, the number of attending Global Fortune 500 companies and leading industry leaders hit a record high of 289, with the value of signed transactions up 6.7 percent year-on-year, reaching $78.41 billion. In the first 10 months this year, a total of 41,947 foreign enterprises were newly established in China, up 32.1 percent year-on-year, official data showed.

"They reflect foreign enterprises' confidence of investing in China while underscore China's bright economic prospects," the ministry said.

It stressed that the revised Counter-Espionage Law is not aimed at normal business activities and won't affect all legal foreign investment and operations in China.

Espionage activities are serious crimes, which are different from businesses' normal investment, operations and research and development activities. Those activities can be clearly differentiated from normal business dealing. Those who distort Chinese law-enforcers' legal anti-espionage efforts as "cracking down on foreign enterprises" is intentional distortion of the law, out of their gangster logic, the statement read.

Those that view China's Counter-Espionage Law with tinted glasses and "the US-style concept" will get a wrong answer, it said.

China's laws give clear definitions to "national secrets" and "business secrets". The seven kinds of state secrets listed in the State Secrets Protection Law doesn't involve business secrets. The six espionage activities listed in the Counter-Espionage Law doesn't involve so-called collecting commercial information in a normal way, according to the ministry.

The ministry accused the US of defining stealing business secrets as a kind of espionage crimes in its Economic Espionage Act of 1996, abusing the law to crack down on its international competitors. The US even "fabricated evidences" to cook up about 10 cases of China-related economic espionage activities.

China's newly revised Counter-Espionage Law came into effect on July 1. The new law improves the definition of espionage activities, includes the protection of documents, data, information, and items related to national security and interests, and adds provisions that consider joining espionage organizations as espionage activities.