The new law, which will take effect Sunday, significantly increases the punishment for those judged to be spreading rumors or politically delicate information. The earlier punishment under a similar measure was an administrative one and not a criminal one, Xinhua reported. Under the earlier administrative law, a person convicted of the charge of spreading rumors online could be placed under detention for five to 10 days and fined as much as 500 renminbi, or about $80.

The new law says people who “fabricate false information about hazards, diseases, disasters or crimes and spread it on information networks or other media, or deliberately spread it on information networks or other media while knowing it is false information, seriously disrupting social orders, will be sentenced to a prison term up to three years, placed under detention or face enforcement measures.”

“In cases where serious consequences are caused, one will be sentenced to a prison term ranging from three to seven years,” the new law says.

Since 2013, Chinese officials have often used another criminal charge, “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” to jail a wide range of people for online speech, including artists, essayists and liberal lawyers. The best-known case is that of Pu Zhiqiang, a civil rights defense lawyer who was detained last year. He was charged by prosecutors in May with inciting ethnic hatred and picking quarrels and provoking trouble, for which he faces up to eight years in prison. His lawyers said the prosecutors had built their case on 28 microblog posts he had written, some of which criticized China’s policies toward the Uighurs, an ethnic minority.