Government Initiatives about Big Data and Their Privacy Challenges in China

Abstract

Since 2014, China’s central government has adopted a series of bid data initiatives to enhance the state’s governance ability and create opportunities for economic growth, among multiple goals. Significant moves include constructing a national system of social credit, setting the timetable for inter-departmental integration and sharing of government databases, and gradually opening government data for social re-use. This general trend of ‘open data’ implies progressive reforms of the government transparency regime, but also poses greater threats to individuals’ data privacy vis-à-vis public authorities. This presentation reviews the complicated body of Chinese law that regulates the collection and use of personal information by public authorities, and discusses the inadequacies of the existing legislative approach in addressing the unfolding big data applications.