China has been accused of launching a ‘direct attack on US citizens’.
It comes as US intelligence officials issued a warning to American businesses and company employees working in East Asia over China’s new counterespionage laws which were introduced on Saturday (July 1). The new laws expand “the definition of espionage from covering state secrets and intelligence to any documents, data, materials, or items related to national security interests, without defining terms,” said the United States government’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center
US officials are warning that any “documents, data, materials, or items” could now be “considered relevant to China’s national security due to ambiguities in the law”. They say that any “documents, data, materials, or items” could now be “considered relevant to PRC [Peoples Republic of China] national security due to ambiguities in the law.”
The new legislation, also has the “potential to create legal risks or uncertainty for foreign companies, journalists, academics, and researchers,” say US intelligence officials.
Republican Senator for Oklahoma Markwayne Mullin has slammed the new laws as a “direct attack on United States citizens and businesses”. Speaking on ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ on Saturday. Mullin said: “When they talk about the word espionage … and national security with no definition, that holds every American citizen that goes to China to do business or on vacation liable for just about anything the Communist Party of China wants to interpret and could arrest you and hold you in contempt.”
Mullin said that because the new law doesn’t define its terms, it gives the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) free rein to accuse anyone of espionage.
“Anything that they deem important, they can go after you personally,” Mullin said. “That is a huge concern because it opens up all types of liability for anything that you might have said on social media inside the United States, anything that you might have said in private in your hotel room.
“China is always listening. That’s what the Communist Party does.
“It says anything for any employee, any executive, anybody that was on your board, you could be personally held liable, and they could arrest you when you’re assigned inside China if they deem it a national security risk.”
