BEIJING: China’s rising highlighting on national security has worked up U.S. and European companies that fright their capability to do business here could be extensively compromised The security crackdown reflects President Xi Jumping’s concerns that foreign forces are intent on overthrowing China’s Communist Party, propagating dangerous Western values such as democracy and free speech, and stimulating a popular uprising or “color revolution,” experts say
Three proposed new laws have been drafted to further empower China’s national security apparatus, giving it wide-ranging and potentially arbitrary powers over a range of foreign activities in China, with apparently very little consideration of the views of the business community. The definition of national security enshrined in these laws is so vague and so extensive “that we are in effect looking at a massive national security overreach,” said Jorge Wattle, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China “The language on economic security is so hazy and so vague, it could apply to a pig farm, it could apply to a car components manufacturer, it could apply to anything,” he said in an interview. “We want as candid and as clear and as transparent language as possible
