New draft of China’s personal information protection law adds restrictions on how apps collect personal data

A new draft version of China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), a much-anticipated piece of legislation as Beijing tightens regulation of Big Tech on numerous fronts, proposes “targeted” restrictions on how mobile apps handle personal data, Beijing’s top legislative body said on Friday.

The new law, expected to be officially rolled out within the year, is now going through its third round of review at the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, the lawmaking body said at a press conference on Friday. The third review is usually the final round before a law is passed.

The latest draft includes several revisions to the previous version, including “targeted” regulations on mobile apps that excessively collect personal information, the commission said. It will also target algorithmic discrimination, a common practice among Chinese internet companies where a platform charges different prices to different users based on how much it thinks they are willing to pay.

The legislation, along with China’s data security law, which goes into effect next month, is expected to put an end to a Wild West era for China’s Big Tech companies in which they have largely had a free hand in how they collect and use consumer data.

Commission spokesman Zang Tiewei said at the press conference that the new draft has added definitions for automated decision making, which includes user profiling and recommendation algorithms, asking companies to make sure that the result of their automated decision-making is “fair” and “just”.