Nowadays the adoption of new measures as well as the activation of the existing ones arises from the terrorism alarm that pervaded all the countries for some time now.

Italy, for its part, adopted - on last spring - the so called “antiterrorism decree”; in the same way, even if in delay, the China adopted the first antiterrorism legislation.

The question is: what this legislation truly is?

Even if the name of the legislation is quite clear, the stringent Chinese legislative system requires profound reflection in order to definitely understand its meaning.

The antiterrorism law has been approved by the National People’s Congress on July and thus voted by the Permanent Commission on the last days of December, coming into force from January 1^st.

The purpose is to contrast the terrorism through the existing companies, that will be obliged to forward all the information necessary to read the cryptographic methods and mechanism of web to the Chinese agencies. In the meanwhile, all the cyber operators will have to complain the requirements imposed by law about the rumors or news on terrorist attacks.

Another important is measure is the one that allows the Liberation Army to conduct military operations even outside the Chinese territory.

Going beyond the worries felt by the Western countries about the potential infringements of human rights (first of all the right of expression) as well as of the international law - in the last respect, about conducting military operations outside the national territory - it has to be pointed out that also a part of Chinese people disagreed on new legislation.

More specifically, it has said that this new law will not really contrast the terrorism, but rather will suppress the right of expression, supervising any sort of dissidence and protest by the citizens, with particular reference to the ones professed by the Muslim residents of Xinjiang.

In defense of the antiterrorism legislation, Ma Li Shaowei, the Deputy Head of the Chinese Legislative Committee’s criminal division, declared that the limitation of civil rights is justified by the need to contrast a phenomena that in many cases could provoke the collapse of the State.

What has to be underlined is the change into which China is going on: for instance, the power of military intervention outside national territory reveals a new diplomatic approach compared to the former one, that was seeks to avoid external action.

All that above means that, aside to the opportunity or not of the legislation, China is building the rule of law, that was so much awaited and that is wondered to replace the authoritative and high command.