To build a ‘Digital China’, the country must first deal with its rampant black market for personal information
- Underground trading of personal information has become a professional and industrialised value chain in China
- The central government is seeking to establish a data governance regime, highlighting the responsibility of online platforms to protect user data
When Sharon Liu, a finance professional in the eastern Chinese city of Tianjin, bought a flat through an online brokerage platform late last year, she never agreed to give strangers her personal information. Now, up to three times a day, she receives calls from people she has never met who know her full name and home address.
“They’re seriously disturbing my work and personal life,” said Liu, who answers them for fear of missing important calls. “Given that they know my address and my phone number, I don’t feel safe,” she told the Post.
Without a law dedicated to protecting personal information, and the lack of clear guidelines, China’s enforcement agencies have struggled to keep up with an increasingly skilled industrial chain of insiders and data brokers.
“We have to acknowledge that [the situation of] Chinese citizens’ personal information leakage and infringement is grim,” said Steve Zhao, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at the Beijing-based Gen law firm.