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The Great Hall of the People, where the China's National People's Congress convenes, in Beijing. (Yonhap News)

China passed a new export control law that empowers the country to restrict the exports of specific products for national security reasons. The new law essentially gives China legal grounds for retaliating against US sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese companies.

According to reports in China’s state-run Xinhua News on Oct. 18, the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress, as China’s legislature is known, passed the Export Control Law shortly before the end of its 22nd session on the previous day. The act is composed of 5 chapters and 49 articles, including general provisions.

The thrust of the new law is to empower the Chinese government to take measures appropriate to the situation against specific countries or regions that damage China’s national interest or national security by abusing export control measures.

The law covers not only Chinese companies but also foreign companies and individuals doing business in China. Discussion of the law has generally focused on military products and technology, including products related to the design, development, and production of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. But it appears that the law could also apply to any cutting-edge technology.

Entities subject to sanctions and the scope of those sanctions will be determined by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission and by the State Council, which functions as China’s executive branch.

“Export controls refer to banning or restricting the exports of specific materials or limiting how or by whom those materials can be used. Recently, export controls have become an important means of protecting national security and the national interest,” said the China Youth Daily, a Chinese newspaper.

In June 2017, China’s Ministry of Commerce released the draft of an export control law that collated various rules about restricting exports scattered across China’s Foreign Trade Law, Customs Law, and regulations about managing the import and export of goods and technology. Revisions of that draft were reviewed twice by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, first in December 2019 and again in July 2020.

Bloomberg noted that the passage of the law gave China a legal framework for responding effectively to American sanctions imposed on Chinese companies such as Huawei, ByteDance, and Tencent.

By Jung In-hwan, Beijing correspondent

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