Chinese data exchange makes first sale involving personal data, paving the way for jobseekers to profit from their resumes
- Chinese authorities are looking at ‘data’ as another production factor, like land and labour, and are experimenting in developing a ‘market’ for data
- The Guiyang data exchange, established in 2015, reported only US$79.4 million in cumulative turnover as of February 2023
A Chinese data exchange has for the first time completed a transaction involving personal data, opening the way for jobseekers to potentially earn a share of profits from the sale of data based on their resumes.
The state-backed Guiyang Global Big Data Exchange, the country’s first data exchange that began operations as early as 2015, has facilitated the country’s first sale of personal data, according to the provincial government of Guizhou in southwest China.
With the consent of individual users, local tech firm Hao Huo collects their resumes and processes the information into a “data product”, which ensures usability and privacy through technologies such as confidential computing, the local government said. After Hao Huo has obtained legal advice from a law firm, it lists the data product on the Guiyang data exchange, where employers can purchase the data, according to the Guizhou government.
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Chinese authorities are looking at “data” as another production factor, like land and labour, and are experimenting in developing a “market” for data. Personal data is particularly sensitive as it falls under China’s strict personal information protection law.
While Guiyang is the first Chinese city to operate a data exchange, its revenue generation has been modest. According to official data, the exchange reported only 549 million yuan (US$79.4 million) in cumulative turnover as of February 2023, and there were only 460 merchants trading data on the exchange.
Four of the most popular products on the exchange currently involve mapping data and services, according to its website.
Under the latest trial, individual users who have shared their resumes can receive a share of the exchange’s earnings, “allowing jobseekers to earn money as they look for a job”, the Guizhou government wrote.
The Guiyang data exchange did not respond to queries asking how much each user could earn.
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As China seeks to further boost its digital economy, Beijing has in recent years laid out its strategic plans for the vast troves of data the country produces. While significantly increasing penalties for data security and privacy violations, the Chinese government is also aiming to create a commercial market for data.
As of November last year, China had 48 local data exchanges similar to the one in Guiyang, while eight more are being developed, according to a white paper published in January by the state-run think tank China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).
Shanghai’s data exchange started trading in late 2021, while trading at the Shenzhen equivalent kicked off at the end of last year. Prior to Guiyang’s recent move, though, trading on these major exchanges was limited to market data that did not involve personal information.
On the Shenzhen data exchange, for instance, state-run China Southern Power Grid is offering the credit data of companies based on their electricity use, with buyers including banks.
Such efforts are moving forward in China despite fundamental challenges facing data exchanges. Chinese laws still have not given clear definitions on data ownership and related rights, making it difficult for the industry to form a consensus, CAICT wrote in its white paper.
Other roadblocks to creating a data market in China include the fact that necessary technologies, such as confidential computing, are expensive to adopt in more complicated and larger-scale use cases, according to the CAICT, which directly reports to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the tech industry regulator.
