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China passed a comprehensive privacy law with the aim of stopping companies from gathering important personal data, as the country faces a surge in internet scams.
Green-lighted by China’s leading lawmaking body, under the new rules, state and private businesses dealing with personal information will be required to decrease data collection and acquire user consent.
However, the Chinese state security system will maintain access to a wide range of personal data. Beijing has long been blamed for exploiting big tech to hasten repression in the northwestern Xinjiang province and somewhere else.
The new rules are also likely to further jolt China’s tech sector, with many top businesses being on the regulators’ radar in recent months over misappropriation of personal data.
Chinese tech stocks including Alibaba and Tencent plummeted in the wake of Friday morning’s announcement.
A spokesman for the National People’s Congress said earlier this week: “The law aims to protect those who “feel strongly about personal data being used for user profiling and by recommendation algorithms or the use of big data in setting [unfair] prices.”
It will stop businesses from setting different prices for the same service based on clients’ shopping history.
