Chinese President Xi Jinping is leading the new government body. Xi was quoted as stating that cybersecurity and information technology had become a matter of national security.

"Without cybersecurity there is no national security, without information technology there is no modernisation," Xi added.

China has fended off accusations that it carries out state-sponsored hacking attacks. This tended to die down after it was discovered that whatever the US and UK was doing was far worse. Besides cybersecurity, China's new committee will cover "online content management,” the latest sign that the nation is not letting up on its strict censorship programmes.