It appears that European firms have not attracted the attention of China’s security establishment, as Europe’s national leaders have generally taken a more accommodating stance toward China than the Biden administration. “This is a law that potentially could make illegal in China the kind of mundane activities that a business would have to do to seek due diligence before you agree to a major investment deal,” he said. Nicholas Burns, criticized the espionage law on Tuesday. The United States ambassador to China, R. “Along with the profound changes in the international and domestic environment, the scope of national security is constantly expanding,” Chen Yixin, the minister for state security, wrote in an article for the party’s chief ideological journal last month. Xi has elevated a cohort of security officials who appear eager to continue this drive for tighter controls. Since a Communist Party congress in October, Mr. CNKI cited the need to suspend such services while it figures out how to enforce the data export rules introduced last year. Since March, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, or CNKI, a company that distributes Chinese research papers, dissertations and statistics to foreign universities and other users abroad, has severely restricted access to them.

Last year, the Cyberspace Administration of China introduced new rules for data that is transferred abroad, requiring that it be assessed by the agency for its “degree of sensitivity” and possible risks to “national security.” Xi’s security demands have rippled throughout the Chinese government. And the Mintz Group, an American company specializing in corporate investigations, said in late March that officials visited its Beijing office and detained five Chinese employees. Officers visited the Shanghai office of Bain & Company, a major American consulting firm, and questioned employees, Bain said in late April. The scrutiny has left some companies questioning whether their China operations are at risk. International consulting and advisory firms are among those that have faced questioning from Chinese security officers in recent weeks, adding to fears among foreign investors that the authorities may be trying to choke off their access to unvarnished information about markets, competitors and potential deals in China.

With China’s pandemic restrictions dismantled and its leaders wooing executives flying into the country again, this was supposed to be a springtime of renewed investor confidence in the world’s second-biggest economy.īut a drumbeat of government security measures, including a broadening of counterespionage laws, and unannounced visits by investigators to the Chinese offices of several foreign firms have sent a shiver of worry that under Xi Jinping, economic pragmatism could again give way to a heightened focus on state control.

Spook in the stacks