Internet Security

National Security (Nelson & Leigh, n.d.)
The State Secrets Bureau under the Ministry of State Security issued the State Secrecy Protection Regulations for Computer Information Systems on the Internet on January 1, 2000 to prohibit the dissemination, storing and processing of state secrets by Internet-connected computer systems. State secrets include all reports not previously disclosed through official news agencies. The regulations apply to all content transmitted through the Internet in all forms.

On 28 December 2000 the 19th Session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress passed a resolution on maintaining the security of computer networks. This resolution now makes it clear that a number of actions, if found to be carried out or evident on the Internet, will be deemed criminal offences. The consumers or merchants who violate Chinese law governing state secrets through exchanges via e-Commerce may found themselves liable.

Article 8 of The Law of the People's Republic of China Concerning the Maintenance of State Secrets sets out a broad definition of state secrets as to include "other matters of the state determined by state agencies for the maintenance of secrets as matters to be kept secret." The term has been defined in a very expansive manner in some court cases. In Case of Defendant Zhu's Theft of Important State Secrets, the Supreme People's Court affirmed the decision of a lower people's court holding that a national university examination questionnaire constituted a "state secret," the improper disclosure of which is punishable by the State Secrets Law and the Criminal Code.

Article 31 of the States Secret Law that anyone who intentionally or negligently discloses a state secret, "if of a serious nature," shall be punished in accordance with Article 186 of the Criminal Code of the People's Republic of China. Article 186 may impose imprisonment or detention of a term of not more than seven years.

Article 35 of the Implementing Measures for the Law of the People's Republic of China Concerning the Maintenance of State Secrets further defines the "disclosure of a state secret" as "causing a state secret to be known by anyone who should not know it" or "causing the prescribed scope of persons authorized to come into contact with a state secret to be exceeded, without being able to establish that no person who should not know the secret has learned of it."