Armed police stand guard in the popular shopping and nightlife area of Sanlitun in Beijing on December 26, 2015. Getty Images

China has passed a broad range of counter-terrorism measures that could make life extremely difficult for internet and tech companies operating in the country.

The anti-terrorism law, which is China'sfirst, gives the government wide-ranging new powers over online communications and social media, and will require companies to hand over technical details and decrypt messages on demand.


Internet service providers will have to provide "technical support and assistance, including decryption" to the police and national security forces under the new laws.

The approved draft, as detailed by Xinhua, dropped one earlier measure that would have forced companies to hand over encryption codes to the government. But it still includes extensive new measures, founded on an exceptionally broad definition of terrorism that critics say could lead to abuses of power.

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Xinhau said that terrorism was now defined as any activity "that, by means of violence, sabotage or threat, generates social panic, undermines public security, infringes on personal and property rights, and menaces government organs and international organisations".

The law also restricts how journalists will be able to report on acts of terrorism: "none, except news media with approval from counter-terrorism authorities in charge of information distribution, shall report on or disseminate the personal details of on-scene counter-terrorist workers, hostages or authorities' response activities" said Xinhua.


Chinese officials have come under pressure to respond to anti-government violence and terrorism, after a year that included the deaths of 29 people at the hands of knife-wielding Uighur militants.But the unanimous passing of the law by China's compliant legislature followed widespread international condemnation of an earlier draft, published in March, that would have required companies to install "back door" access to communications for government agencies, bypassing all encryption.

"We have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States," Obama said in March.

The new law, which removed provisions to hand-over encryption keys, will still put companiues such as Apple in a difficult position, given they maintain that they do not hold individual encrpytion details for iPhones and other devices.

The law was unsurprisingly defended by the government, who said it was necessary in order to give law enforcement the power to effectively combat terrorism -- the same justifcation for similar laws that have either passed or been published in draft in the UK and US.


"Relevant regulations in the anti-terrorism law will not affect the normal business operation of companies, and we do not use the law to set up 'backdoors' to violate the intellectual property rights of companies... The law will not damage people's freedom of speech or religion." said Li Shouwei, a National People’s Congress official who helped produce the law, according to Reuters.

Shouwei also cited western nations such as the UK for precedent in passing the new laws, saying that China was "simply doing what other major nations already do in asking technology firms to help fight terror".

In the UK a revised Investigatory Powers bill, also known as the 'Snoopers' charter', is set to debated by parliament and likely passed in the first half of 2016, despite heavy criticism of its motivations and technical proficiency from privacy groups, tech firms including Apple and security experts.