BEIJING -- The Chinese government announced Wednesday that it had enacted a new national security law that critics said will allow China to maintain the primacy of Communist Party rule across all aspects of society.
The law is expected to bolster the power of the domestic security apparatus and the military.
The law says "security" must be maintained in all fields, from culture to education to cyberspace. A draft version of the law was released in May, leading to discussion about its long-term effects. The version approved Wednesday is even wider in scope -- adding, for instance, that security must be defended on international seabeds, in the polar regions and even in outer space.
The law came in addition to two other proposals that are being scrutinized by foreign leaders and corporate executives, who say President Xi Jinping is moving to severely restrict the influence and actions of foreign organizations in China.
One of the other proposed laws would regulate foreign nongovernmental organizations and place them under the oversight of the Ministry of Public Security. The other would be a counterterrorism law.
While those two proposals, currently in draft form, have specific details on controlling foreign groups, the national security law is a more abstract statement of principles, aimed at exhorting all Chinese citizens and agencies to be vigilant about threats to the party.
Legal scholars and analysts in China say it will probably lead to the security apparatus amassing more power, and to courts employing a broad definition of national security violations. Human-rights advocates expect the same and say they are worried that defendants accused of such violations will have little legal protection.
"It is as much to do with protecting the Communist Party and punishing those that criticize the leadership as addressing national security," William Nee, a researcher at Amnesty International, said of the law.
The law, which was passed Wednesday by a committee of the National People's Congress, also assigns oversight of national security to a central agency. Analysts said this is a reference to the National Security Commission, established and run by Xi, which is widely seen as a party rather than a government organization.
Zheng Shuna, deputy director of the legislative affairs commission of the National People's Congress, said Wednesday that China's national security situation was "increasingly grim" and that "from the inside we are dealing with the double pressure of maintaining political security and social stability."
She added that both internal and external elements of national security were "more complicated than at any other time in history."
Citing articles in the law, Zheng said the goal of maintaining national security also applied to Hong Kong and Macau but that the law would not be enacted there. Those two territories are, at least in theory, governed by their own laws, and any attempt by Beijing to apply the national security law there could lead to legal and political battles. In Hong Kong, there already has been rising resentment of heavy-handed party rule.
On Wednesday, the Hong Kong government issued a statement saying that "the law shall not be applied" in the city. It said safeguarding national security would instead be guided by local legislation in accordance with Hong Kong's mini-constitution, called the Basic Law.
A summation of ideas expressed by Xi in speeches and policy statements since he took power in late 2012, the national security law contains a wide statutory interpretation of threats to the Communist Party and an expansive definition of the party's footprint across the world.
Zheng said the law's references to safeguarding national security in space, on seabeds and at the poles were meant to give China adequate "legal support" for its projects in those realms. The inclusion of seabeds was widely seen as being due to growing tensions over disputes involving China, the United States and Southeast Asian nations in the South China Sea.
Analysts said one purpose of the new law is to further indoctrinate ordinary Chinese with Communist Party ideology and the party's perception of what constitutes an external threat. On Wednesday, Xinhua, the state news agency, posted on its microblog account that April 15 was now "national security education day" and that education would be carried out "to enhance everyone's awareness of national security."
A Section on 07/02/2015