raising concerns for foreign technology companies.
The Internet — which is subject to strict censorship in China — was “a significant infrastructure facility of the country”, Zheng said, adding that Beijing’s sovereignty over it should be “respected and maintained”.
Xi has made security concerns a top issue, and chaired the first meeting of the country’s national security commission in April last year.
Beijing has repeatedly clashed with Washington over cyber spying and is embroiled in longstanding territorial rows in the East China Sea with Japan, and in the South China Sea with several regional countries.
Maya Wang, China researcher for US-based Human Rights Watch, said all governments were justified in having their own national security laws and apparatus, but the content of China’s law had caused concern.
“It includes elements that define criticism of the government as a form of subversion,” she said.
“It is very vague in defining what kind of specific actions would constitute a citizen endangering state security.”
The new law has been also criticised by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, whose president Joerg Wuttke said in an emailed statement: “The definitions... are so extensive in both wording and scope that we are in effect looking at a massive national security overreach.
“Such vagueness creates a great deal of uncertainty for business.”
Wang said the measure was part of a series of state security legislation — including a new anti-terrorism law — that as a whole “reduces the capacity of civil society to criticise the government and hold the government accountable”.
Campaigners say the draft anti-terror law contains measures for a “non-stop strike hard campaign” in Xinjiang, homeland of the Uighur ethnic minority, signalling that a crackdown initially intended to last one year could continue indefinitely.
China has already rolled out tough measures to confront what it labels “terrorism” in the far-western region.
A new criminal law was submitted last week to the NPC, which includes harsher punishments for those involved in “cults or superstitious activities”, and widens the list of activities which can be defined as terrorism, state media said.