With Communist China’s New Espionage Laws Is It Really Worth Doing Business With The Brutal Dictatorship

On April 26th,2023, the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party released a revised anti-espionage law that will come into effect on July 1st, 2023. The new law has expanded the definition of espionage, making it much more encompassing yet more difficult to define. Human rights enforcers believe that this is yet another ploy for the repression of the Chinese people and will lead to targeting foreign individuals and companies in communist mainland China. The brutal CCP’s restrictions on the transmission of any information related to national security under the updated anti-espionage law have sparked fears that the CCP is targeting foreign individuals and companies. This could obviously lead to arbitrary law enforcement, such as detaining individuals without concrete evidence. Foreign companies have already been affected. An executive at Japan’s Astellas Pharmaceuticals’ Beijing office was arrested last month over alleged espionage. This incident has shaken the Japanese business community, with some companies already reassessing risks and halting business travel to China.

It seems totally hypocritical that communist China can spy on whoever it wants, and steal other countries’ valuable IP, but anyone who even seems to be doing anything wrong in communist China is immediately arrested under these outrageous espionage laws. Let us never forget that mainland China is an archaic and brutal dictatorship and has absolutely no ‘rule of law’ so it is very difficult for other countries to do business with a communist state.

Hopefully now would be a good time for many countries to reassess their relationship with communist China, and start thinking about the brutal and truly authoritarian way that communist China treats not only their own citizens but everyone else with complete contempt and disregard. People doing business with China must ask themselves, Is it really worth all the hassle and anguish and potential staff imprisonment simply to save a few dollars?