China has focused one other enterprise consulting agency on nationwide safety grounds, launching an investigation of the Shanghai-based Capvision Partners as a part of a broader crackdown on the business, state media reported on Monday evening.

Officers raided a number of of the agency’s places of work in China, together with in Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou and Shenzhen, state media stated, explaining that the corporate was not “earnestly fulfilling the responsibilities and obligations” of stopping espionage.

Capvision didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

On Monday evening, the corporate stated on its official account on WeChat, a Chinese social media and chat app, that it might “firmly implement national security development” and take a “leading role” in regulating the consultancy business.

The investigation is the newest in a recent government crackdown on consulting and advisory corporations, whose shoppers embrace abroad traders and international corporations in search of info into Chinese business. Mintz Group, an American firm that focuses on company investigations, stated in March that Chinese authorities had raided its places of work, detained 5 of its Chinese employees and closed the department. Last month, Bain & Company, a U.S. consulting agency, stated safety officers had visited its places of work and questioned workers.

The police advised Jiangsu Television, a state broadcaster, that Capvision had incessantly contacted “secret-related personnel” within the Chinese Communist Party in addition to officers in delicate fields corresponding to protection and science. The authorities accused Capvision of hiring consulting specialists “with high remuneration” to “illegally obtain various types of sensitive data,” which they stated posed a “major risk and hidden peril to China’s national security.”

A separate report Monday by CCTV, the Chinese state broadcaster, stated the multiagency probe resulted within the arrest of no less than one worker of a state-owned firm who was sentenced to 6 years in jail for offering “state secrets and intelligence” to Capvision’s international shoppers.

It’s unclear when the raids on Capvision passed off or if different corporations have been focused in addition to Mintz and Bain.

Last month, China’s legislature handed a revised counterespionage legislation, broadening the definition of what could also be construed as spying together with sharing “documents, data, materials or objects bearing on national security and interests.”

It indicators Beijing’s renewed efforts to restrict the move of what it considers delicate info to international traders and governments. China is locked in a standoff with the United States over restrictions on microchip expertise and rising unease about Chinese dominance of supplies and elements used within the manufacturing of electrical automobiles.

Capvision was based in 2006 by former Bain consultants and Morgan Stanley funding bankers and is headquartered in New York and Shanghai, in response to the corporate’s web site.

News of the raids on consulting corporations final month prompted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to warn of rising dangers in doing enterprise in China.

Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow on the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior U.S. intelligence officer, stated the raids had been a “a self-defeating strategy” as a result of no matter China gained by limiting delicate info was “not worth the reputational costs China is paying with foreign businesses.”

Mr. DiPippo stated multinational corporations in China had been making an attempt to find out if the investigations had been pushed by nationwide safety issues or had been carried out as retaliation for the Biden administration’s commerce restrictions on China.

“While these explanations are not mutually exclusive, the Capvision case adds more weight to the national security argument,” Mr. DiPippo stated. “In that case, the actions may not be arbitrary, but they will have a chilling effect, especially with investors and local staff employed by U.S. firms.”

Claire Fu and Olivia Wang contributed analysis.