China tightens management over firm knowledge with switch guidelines

Companies in China would wish authorities approval to switch essential knowledge overseas beneath proposed guidelines introduced Friday that might tighten Beijing’s management over data and may disrupt operations for worldwide companies.

The measure is required to guard the Chinese public and “safeguard national security,” the Cyberspace Administration of China mentioned.

President Xi Jinping’s authorities sees details about China’s 1.4 billion folks as a possible safety threat in non-public fingers. It has issued a flurry of guidelines tightening management over how firms collect and deal with data.

A crackdown on data security launched in late 2020 fueled anxiousness amongst buyers, who’ve knocked greater than $1.3 trillion off the total market worth of e-commerce platform Alibaba, video games and social media operator Tencent and different tech giants.

Companies that wish to switch essential knowledge overseas must report on how a lot and what kind of data is concerned and security measures, in response to the CAC. Regulators would resolve inside every week whether or not to just accept that or conduct their very own evaluation, which may last as long as 60 days.

The guidelines would apply to transfers that contain “sensitive personal information” of at the least 10,000 folks or any firm that handles data on greater than 1 million folks. They give no particulars of what’s essential or delicate.

Rules imposed earlier prohibit firms from storing details about Chinese residents overseas.

That prompted complaints that world firms are put at an obstacle as a result of they can not mix data from China with different international locations, whereas Chinese rivals can gather all their knowledge at their headquarters.

A separate legislation that takes impact Monday establishes safety requirements, prohibits firms from disclosing data with out buyer permission and tells them to restrict how a lot they gather. Unlike knowledge safety legal guidelines in Western international locations, the Chinese guidelines say nothing about limiting authorities or ruling Communist Party entry to private data.

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