How to buy and sell data? Shanghai starts new exchange for trading massive amounts of data like commodities

  • The Shanghai Data Exchange initially offered 20 data products at the start of trading on Thursday
  • These include flight information from China Eastern Airlines, and data from China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

The Shanghai Data Exchange started trading on November 25, 2021. Photo: Shutterstock

The Shanghai Data Exchange opened for business on Thursday, marking China’s latest attempt to build a vast market for data – dubbed the new oil of the digital economy – which can be sorted, priced and traded like regular commodities.

The new exchange, which started trading on Thursday, initially offered 20 data products, including flight information from China Eastern Airlines, and various data from telecommunications network operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.
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