China Takes Full Control of National Internet Activity; Foreign Investors among Targets

China`s key information systems will become fully controllable as the government`s new rules aim to supervise all Internet activity. The new legislation is part of a five-year cybersecurity program, a plan against cyber confrontation with the United States and other great powers.

The law covers everything from territorial sovereignty to measures to tighten cyber security, a move likely to rile foreign businesses, as Reuters reported. A main component of the law makes all key network infrastructure and information systems “secure and controllable.”

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The new legislation – covering terrorism, cyber security and foreign non-government organizations ” has raised concerns among foreign governments, business and civil society groups. They fear China`s cyber-security plan received a powerful boost after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the universal surveillance capabilities of the US intelligence, which allow interception of data from all over the World Wide Web and straddle international communication lines.

The wave of foreign criticism of the Chinese legislation highlights a vague law that could require technology firms making products in China to use source code released to inspectors to expose intellectual property.

The law passed last Wednesday through the National People’s Congress (NPC), the top body of China’s parliament, by a vote of 154 to zero.

On Saturday, China unveiled its “Internet Plus” action plan to integrate the Internet with traditional industries and fuel economic growth, according to state-controlled Xinhua News Agency. The plan will integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things with modern manufacturing to encourage development of e-commerce, industrial networks and Internet banking, and to help Internet companies increase their international presence. The government hopes it can establish new industrial modes by integrating key sectors with the Internet, including mass entrepreneurship and innovation, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, finance, public services, logistics, e-commerce, traffic, biology and artificial intelligence.

BBC writes that US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused China on Sunday of stealing commercial and government secrets, after 14 million current and former civilian US government employees had personal information exposed to alleged Chinese hackers. She said the country would “try to hack into everything that doesn’t move in America.”

In Q1 2015, more Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks originated in China than in any other country. China is responsible for 23.45% of the world`s DDoS attacks, which are malicious attempts to make servers unavailable to users by interrupting the services of a host connected to the Internet.