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China Businesses Privacy Technology

China's New Privacy Law Leaves US Behind (axios.com) 67

While China's sweeping new data privacy laws have left tech companies confused about how to comply, they also put the U.S. even further behind in the global race to set digital standards. From a report: China enacted its Personal Information Privacy Law earlier this month, following Europe as the second major international player to have its own sweeping data privacy regulations. The law, regarded as China's version of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation, is a set of rules for how businesses can collect, use, process, share and transfer personal information. Another Chinese data regulation, the Data Security Law, went into effect Sept. 1. The laws aim to protect Chinese citizens from the private sector, while the Chinese government still has easy access to personal data.

In May, influential U.S. business groups sent comments, viewed by Axios, to the National People's Congress protesting that the draft law's vague language, monetary penalties and criminal liabilities were harsh. They also said it would hurt innovation by being overly prescriptive and burdensome. The U.S. still does not have a federal data privacy law, and China's move could allow it to set future global norms on its terms. Meanwhile, tech companies doing business in China will have to navigate the vague new rules, and that could be expensive.

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China's New Privacy Law Leaves US Behind

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  • by djp2204 ( 713741 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:29PM (#62014219)

    The US depends on retail sales and consumer debt to generate the âoewealthâ in its GDP. The ad revenue and sales produced by data collection and mining drives this consumption. China and Europe do not depend on this level of consumerism, so they enacted strict privacy laws. The US has not and will not for this reason alone.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Interesting FP, but I wish you would be more "respectful" of Slashdot's font handicap. Makes it a bit hard to read your post.

      Basically concurrence, though limited because I think it's the scale of the internal Chinese market that is going to determine whether this law matters to non-Chinese companies that want to do business there. They already face high translation costs for localization, and they have to consider whether they will be allowed to compete fairly against domestic (Chinese) companies, plus now

      • The Chinese government already scoops up all this data. They know how valuable it is to them. They don't want other governments to also gain access to this data easily.

        Take for example the Chinese tennis star [cnn.com] who has been completely removed from sight in China. If her posts were held on non-Chinese servers, Chinese people could see what she said. The Government wouldn't be able to so easily censor it all.
        Something as simple as location tracking information held by a third party could have proven where she

        • Yeah, upon reflection I should have changed that lousy Subject.

          Your reply is unclear and I cannot even tell if you are agreeing ior disagreeing with anything I wrote. So I'm changing the Subject again because this is not really a reply to you. But feel free to try and clarify your points. [And the following second person references mostly mean "any reader".]

          As regards bad solution approaches related to your example, the latest news suggests that China is going to pursue some flavor of the most obvious one.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The US depends on retail sales and consumer debt to generate the âoewealthâ in its GDP. The ad revenue and sales produced by data collection and mining drives this consumption. China and Europe do not depend on this level of consumerism, so they enacted strict privacy laws. The US has not and will not for this reason alone.

      You keep using the word "privacy" and "China" in the same breath. It's not "privacy" "while the Chinese government still has easy access to personal data".

    • I don't think that at all explains China's motivation for this. I think it's more likely that they don't want to allow for the possibility that the private sector can have very much of an idea how the truth differs from whatever the communist party declares it to be.

  • Oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wenbaiyi ( 7923204 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:32PM (#62014225)
    Privacy law in China? Can you say Oxymoron?
    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:55PM (#62014307)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @04:50PM (#62014503)

        The intent and future use of "privacy protection in China" is to force foreign companies and services to give CCP easy access to company data. China/CCP is not a free country.

        "The laws aim to protect Chinese citizens from the private sector, while the Chinese government still has easy access to personal data."

      • China believes in privacy like Google believes in privacy.

        I've been looking at China via youtube and am very surprised at the progress the country has made. Imagine if the USA government did some socializing to match China Free healthcare from conception to grave, Free University Free dental, glasses, hearing aids, and other prosthetics, Take a look at some Americans who moved to China and their reactions. The country has a modern clean advanced development look. Not all youtube channels can lie about how great China is and is going forward. They already have

    • by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *

      Likely tl;dr version of this "privacy" law:

      ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

  • CCP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SumDog ( 466607 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:34PM (#62014231) Homepage Journal

    The CCP privacy laws? I'm assuming the require all business to share all their private keys with the CCP? Is this some Orwellian newspeak where they use "privacy" when they mean "surveillance." You cannot, for a second, convince me to believe the nation that has a social credit system, welds people in their homes during disease outbreaks, and sends an ethnic minority to re-education camps, suddenly gives a shit about any citizen's "privacy." Please, give me a fucking break.

    • Re:CCP (Score:4, Informative)

      by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @04:08PM (#62014345) Journal

      This means "Foreign companies will be penalized for gathering any data we decide is confidential." Of course it means nothing for Chinese firms, the government, or the CCP. Not that there's much difference between any of those three. They will continue to spy as they see fit. Who is going to stop them?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        nothing for Chinese firms, the government, or the CCP.

        You don't need to repeat yourself three times.

        • by spun ( 1352 )

          I literally wrote it that way myself at first, as "Chinese firms, the government, or the CCP. But I repeat myself." and then for some reason thought, "Well that's not clear enough" so I wrote "Not that there's much difference between any of those three" instead. Sigh. I should have just left it the first way.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The law in China is basically the same as the US. Companies are required to assist the government if it asks. In the US there are National Security Letters that serve the same function.

      • Yep, pretty much the same. Although I suppose Tim Cook wasn't worried about being mysteriously "disappeared" if he fought against the US governments attempt to retrieve personal information from an iDevice. And most US citizens don't worry they'll get a visit from government men if you say something disparaging about the President or his party. Accuse a politician in China of coercing you into having sex with them, and the government cuts you off from the world in roughly 30 minutes, perhaps not to be he

    • The CCP privacy laws? I'm assuming the require all business to share all their private keys with the CCP? Is this some Orwellian newspeak where they use "privacy" when they mean "surveillance." You cannot, for a second, convince me to believe the nation that has a social credit system, welds people in their homes during disease outbreaks, and sends an ethnic minority to re-education camps, suddenly gives a shit about any citizen's "privacy." Please, give me a fucking break.

      You mean *still* requires businesses to share private data about users. Businesses in the US, indeed around the world, signed onto that one without blinking. Doesn't matter if it was Google, Facebook, or fill_in_the_blank company, they groveled to the Chinese state.

      However China doesn't give a hoot about private companies at all, since most of their businesses do not require the use of data like this they can easily give consumers rights... against corporations. Not the state mind you, but against compa

  • by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:36PM (#62014237)
    The CCP just makes competition illegal.
  • Foreign Businesses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LarryRiedel ( 141315 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:36PM (#62014239)
    China doesn't want Foreign Businesses having the data the Chinese Government gets to collect, collate and analyze. It's not about privacy for the Chinese people. The US wants to prevent foreign companies like ByteDance from collecting data about US residents too.
    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's sad that people have this image of the Chinese government as some kind of comic book villain.

      Jinping is motivated by a desire to make things better for Chinese citizens. He is willing to commit genocide to do it, if he thinks it's necessary.

      Privacy laws, limits on gaming time for kids, maximum working hours. Just because the government does bad things didn't mean it can't also do good things.

      • by robot5x ( 1035276 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @07:18PM (#62014949)

        It's sad that people have this image of Hitler and the Nazis as some kind of comic book villain.

        Hitler was motivated by a desire to make things better for German citizens. He was willing to commit genocide to do it, if necessary.

        The Nazi's implemented many welfare reforms, and increased employment massively (rearmament!). Just because they murdered six million jews doesn't mean they can't also do good things.

      • Jinping is motivated by a desire to make things better for Chinese citizens. He is willing to commit genocide to do it, if he thinks it's necessary.

        Would he be willing to remove himself if he thought that it would make things better for Chinese citizens? My guess is no.

        Maxim 20: If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win.

  • Axios lol (Score:3, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @04:10PM (#62014353)
    What? They just printing articles direct for China now,?
  • Regulation legalizes a limit on actions that are endemic but unwanted. They do not stop the practices, only provide a framework where the entrenched parties and the government agree to comply while keeping smaller players out of the market and limiting further innovation in the market they regulate.

    If you donâ(TM)t want to give up your privacy, then do not put your dirty laundry online.

  • Aside from generating shit-tons of trash and food waste?

    But hey -- keep on thumping your chest and screeching "MURCA #1". The US is done and over. It was already declared a 3rd world shithole by the UN in 2017 thanks to runaway income inequality, the world's worst health care system and the ever growing population of homeless and those living in poverty

    A nation that refuses to educate it's own, provide it's citizens health care and a working class that loves and I mean LOVES to be ass-raped by Wall Street

    • Keep up those educational posts and I'll let you know when immigration, legal and otherwise, finally winds down. Then you'll know your work is done.

      • Ohh look at the towering MAGA intellect

        This is a nation of IMMIGRANTS. Fact is, much of America's greatest "inventions" were from the minds of immigrants. And this might come as a shock and surprise, but the most powerful resource humanity has is the fucking HUMAN MIND. With the exception of you and your kind, who wear willful ignorance as a badge of honor and consider higher education "liebrul indoctronashun"

        You want immigration to die out? Start your fucking Cicvil War already. Because once that start,

        • Me, I love immigrants, they continue to be the strength of the U.S. I was just noticing the inconsistency between your assertions and the inflow of people into the U.S. But your quick (perhaps drunken?) categorization of me is highly entertaining. Very similar to watching a redneck screw in a lightbulb.

    • Move to China then, they have nothing on the US. Rolling blackouts, rampant corruption, oppressive government, a poverty line of $600/year, ethnic cleansing, atrocious pollution, open government sponsored racism, food rationing, government penalties for not having the right number of kids, inability to speak out against the government, massive rewriting of history... Do you thing the Yulin Dog Festival would even be a possibility here? You cant even own your house, you lease it from the government. You can
  • I just went to theguardian.com and got a popup about some California privacy law that I had to click through. It's bad enough that I have to click on shit for the GDPR, but now California too? A better idea would be to draft a law that somehow specifically forbids these kinds of fucking popups, but I don't know how to do that on a practical basis.
    • I just went to theguardian.com and got a popup about some California privacy law that I had to click through. It's bad enough that I have to click on shit for the GDPR, but now California too? A better idea would be to draft a law that somehow specifically forbids these kinds of fucking popups, but I don't know how to do that on a practical basis.

      Are you sure you're not the "dead-seriously my experience with the modern Internet" guy?

  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @05:58PM (#62014713)
    Awful analysis. Apparently this law... um.. leaves the US in the dust because it protects Chinese consumers from abuse by Chinese companies? News flash: last time I checked, there isn't much differentiation between Chinese companies and the Chinese government. And the Chinese government will take whatever it wants, whenever it wants, do whatever it wants with the data, and they don't need permission from anyone.

    I'm not sure if this is good or bad. It just codifies what everyone already knew about China. "nobody in China can abuse your data without the CCPs permission". No surprise. Not much of anything at all happens over there without the CCPs permission.

    The US is slightly better. Supposedly, the government needs a court order to extract data from a company, but the NSA sure as hell doesn't bother with that crap. I'm not a big fan of Snowden, but his leaks definitely proved that the government can and will suck up petabytes of personal data without bothering with those pesky court approvals. And don't try to claim that "we're not doing that anymore". If you believe that, I have multiple bridges to sell you. One could argue that the US is being more responsible in terms of what they're doing with the data, but that's probably a matter of perspective.
  • If there are "privacy controls" on Chinese applications and Chinese servers, then it becomes harder for foreign espionage - especially the Big Data tools that Snowden leaked data on. You can't identify easy prey to recruit, you can't monitor for changes in activity so easily, hacking into servers won't yield as much, etc. Privacy is very useful to the Chinese in the current economic war between the US and China. Not so much for the citizens, but for the Chinese government itself. For exactly the same reason

    • Ah, now there is a really smart reply. That is exactly the issue in the US, this crazy idea that these third parties, who may be foreign, should have greater surveillance capabilities than the government. China is just being strategically smart not allowing this, and it could bite us in the ass that we dont follow suit to some degree.

  • Does the author realise that China is a DICTATORSHIP and the US is (still) a DEMOCRACY.

    The motivation for privacy laws in China and the US is TOTALLY different.

    No sensible analyst would COMPARE them, let alone think they are together in some kind of RACE, FFS !

    • Does the author realise that China is a DICTATORSHIP and the US is (still) a DEMOCRACY.

      Only just...

      The motivation for privacy laws in China and the US is TOTALLY different.

      Why do people care about motivation?
      What about the practical results for the consumers?

      No sensible analyst would COMPARE them, let alone think they are together in some kind of RACE, FFS !

      If you don't compare them. How do you know the US is better?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • China is just wanting in on the sweet GDPR money/gravy train. "Give us billions of dollars Google, Facebook, etc. because our 'privacy laws' say so." Then Google, Facebook, etc. fork over billions of dollars. Who wouldn't want to be in on that action?

    • China is just wanting in on the sweet GDPR money/gravy train. "Give us billions of dollars Google, Facebook, etc. because our 'privacy laws' say so." Then Google, Facebook, etc. fork over billions of dollars. Who wouldn't want to be in on that action?

      China really needs that extra billion or so..
      China trade surplus with the U.S. rises to monthly record in September [cnbc.com]

      China’s trade surplus with the U.S. rose to a monthly record of $42 billion

      China’s exports in U.S. dollar terms surged 28.1% year-on-year in September to $305.74 billion, beating the 21% growth figure expected by the Reuters poll.

      They will just selectively enforce the new rules to favour the companies they want to favour. Same as everyone else.

  • Drooling goobers in the west, who bought into their own politicians' blather that corporations are like the worst evil thing ever, yo, look up to a regime that exempts everyone except themselves from spying on you.

    News at 11!

  • Of course they protect your data from the private sector- they need to protect their power base.
  • I'm sure Peng Shuai will appreciate the Chinese government's interest in protecting her privacy.

  • Canada's not considered a major international player? We've had PIPEDA [priv.gc.ca] for years (which was almost as strong as the GDPR), and just recently updated it to PIPEDA2 [priv.gc.ca] after the GDPR came out to match or exceed GDPR.

  • I totally trust the Chinese government to protect its citizens' privacy rights. Totally.
  • "Mass surveillance in China [wikipedia.org] is the network of monitoring systems used by the Chinese government to monitor Chinese citizens. (...) Mass surveillance in China is closely related to its Social Credit System (...)".

    If being herded with a social credit system and constant invasive monitoring is what it means to be in front, then I am glad to be among the ones left behind.

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