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Defining State Secrets In China. What Stratfor Says....

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

Got an email the other day seeking my assessment of a just published Stratfor article on China's new State Secrets law. My response was as follows:

This is an absolutely excellent analysis. My sense (very much projecting outwards) is that US lawyers are pretty clueless as to how to interpret this. It is so vague as to be scary and there is very little lawyers can do beyond saying "be really careful" in dealing with Chinese SOEs [State Owned Entities] and what might be their secret information, but we don't really know what constitutes secret information. As for whether it will be applied, the easy answer is yes and no. It will be applied when China wants to apply it, which will probably not be all that often, but certainly when China thinks it matters.

I am a long time fine of Stratfor's analysis of both China and Russia and I was hugely impressed with its article on China's new state secret law. I wanted to link over to its "absolutely excellent analysis" of the new law, but because Stratfor is a for-pay service, I would not be able to do so. So I requested Stratfor create a free link just for our readers and they agreed. The article is an April 29, 2010, "China Security Memo," entitled, "Telecom and State Secrets." This is the best analysis out there on China's state secrets law and I urge everyone to go read it. Reading it is not going to give you "the answers" but it will aid you tremendously in being able to spot the key issues you absolutely must be looking at if you are doing business in or with China. I highly recommend this article.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on May 02, 2010 (boomark / email).