The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) passed a law restricting exports of controlled items, allowing the government to act against countries that abuse export controls in a way that harms China’s interests. The new law includes detailed stipulations on export-control lists and measures and will go into effect on December 1. Under the law, China can take “reciprocal measures” toward countries or regions that abuse export controls and threaten its national security. Export controls under the law will apply to civilian, military and nuclear products, as well as goods, technologies and services related to national security. The law also clarifies that technical documentation related to the items covered by the law is also subject to export-control stipulations. It adds that Chinese authorities will publish an export control list in a “timely manner.” Companies and individuals who endanger national security by breaching the new export control law, including those outside of China, could face criminal charges. Violations of the law, such as exporting items without a permit, could result in fines of CNY5 million, or up to 20 times the business value of the illegal transaction.

The new law came after the United States’ recent attempts to block Chinese technology firms such as telecom supplier Huawei, ByteDance’s TikTok app and Tencent’s messaging app WeChat on grounds of posing a national security threat. Washington has also used an “entity list” to make it more difficult for U.S. firms to sell high-tech items to blacklisted companies. Targeted firms include Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China’s biggest chipmaker. The latest measure gives China more room to safeguard national security and interests, after the Commerce Ministry issued a revised list of technologies that are banned or restricted for export in August. U.S. President Donald Trump had earlier ordered ByteDance to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok to an American firm or be banned from operating in the U.S.. Technologies TikTok uses, such as voice recognition, text analysis and content recommendation are on the export list, the Shanghai Daily reports.

China’s new export control law could be used to break the U.S.’ “long-arm” jurisdiction against Chinese companies in an increasingly brutal face-off between Beijing and Washington, the Global Times writes. “In particular, analysts said, the new law could pave the way for state-sanctioned export controls on rare-earth metals, in what they described as a “no chips, no rare earths” tactic, with reference to the U.S. government’s cutting off major supplies to Huawei Technologies. The Trump administration has been abusing “national security” protection and using excessive export-control measures to attack Huawei to counter the company’s rapid global rise. The U.S. government has endangered global technology supply chains by coercing technology companies in other countries to comply with its export control measures, pushing Huawei to the brink of losing its smartphone business, with its stockpiles of chips set to run out next year,” the Global Times reports.

Zhou Shijian, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University, said the malicious approach adopted by the Trump administration to assault Huawei has made the U.S. vulnerable to reciprocal export control measures by China, as authorized by the newly adopted law. “It makes no sense for the Trump administration to use chips made with rare-earth metals from China to suffocate some of the best Chinese companies,” Zhou said. “It is time for China to respond to such insolent bullying by stopping rare-earth metal exports to the U.S., affecting the chip-making business of a number of U.S. companies such as Qualcomm, Micron and Intel. The U.S. fifth-generation joint strike fighter F-35 uses 500 kilograms of rare-earth metals per plane, that should be stopped, too,” Zhou said, as reported by the Global Times.

The NPC Standing Committee also adopted a new biosecurity law aimed at preventing and managing infectious diseases. The law will come into effect on April 15, 2021. It stipulates that biosecurity is a key component of national security. The law establishes 11 basic systems for biosecurity risk prevention and control, including risk monitoring and early warning, risk investigation and assessment, and information sharing. It also has provisions on biotechnology research, development and application. “Any work unit or individual has the right to report acts that endanger biosecurity,” the regulation said. “When a report is required according to the law, no work unit or individual shall conceal it or hinder others from making a report,” it added on infectious diseases and epidemics. Those who conceal information, omit making reports or prevent others from reporting infectious diseases could be given warnings or be suspended. The law is trying to prevent that outbreaks of infectious diseases such as Covid-19 are kept secret.