A Brief Overview Of China's Compliance Requirements On Personal Data Protection

Cybersecurity and personal data protection witnessed rapid legislative developments in years of 2018 and 2019, while intensive enforcement activities were conducted by the competent authorities against noncompliance in 2019. Certain high-level provisions of the Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as the "Cybersecurity Law") have then been clarified by the new legislation and through the enforcement actions by the competent authorities.

This article aims to provide a very brief overview of personal data requirements for network operators operating in China¹, which may also hopefully serve as a guidance for those overseas companies involving collecting and / or using of personal data in China.² Although the relevant legislative activities are still ongoing, the draft laws and regulations, etc, to a certain extent, reflect the legislative trends on personal data protection. The author, therefore, tries to briefly introduce the