China has adopted a sweeping national-security law that the government says is needed to counter emerging threats but that critics say may be used to quash dissent and exclude foreign investment. As WSJ’s Chun Han Wong reports:
Its passage marked the latest signpost in Beijing’s intensifying crackdown on activism and dissent during the past two years, featuring repression of civil-society groups, heightened monitoring of social media, and sharpened warnings against the spread of Western ideas and influences.
The new legislation forms the centerpiece of a series of proposed security laws, including draft laws on counterterrorism and the management of foreign nonprofit groups. Together, experts said, the laws underpin a push by President Xi Jinping to consolidate his and Beijing’s power and promote a notion of rule of law that doesn’t undermine the Communist Party’s authority.
These laws “reflect the party’s determination to create a garrison state,” said Jerome Cohen, a veteran China legal scholar at New York University. The national security law, he said, is “an ideological platform that guides domestic and foreign policies.”
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