In China, all parties, enterprises, institutions and citizens have the obligations to protect state secrets.

State secrets refer to matters that concern the security and interests of China and that, as determined by legal procedure, are known to a limited number of people for a given period of time. Under the recently updated PRC Law on Protecting State Secrets, such matters include, among others, secrets in the national defense construction and in the activities of the armed forces, secrets in science and technology, as well as those determined by the state secrets protection agency to be state secrets.

The law does not appear to define what exactly constitutes a "state secret" or who may generate such. It also does not answer, if a citizen may create state secrets by personal research. Generally speaking, whoever has access to state secrets should have already been informed by the authority of the nature and therefore if one does not know whether he is dealing with state secrets or not, then probably he is not. With that said, our informal conversation with the official of relevant authorities appears to indicate that the state secrets protection bureau can nevertheless have authority to categorize such personal research as state secrets.

It is a violation to carry or transmit media with state secrets out of the country without approval. In addition, China makes it a crime to steal, spy into, buy or unlawfully supply state secrets or intelligence to a foreign institute or person.