On August 20, 2021, the Standing Committee of the 13th National
People's Congress of China issued the final version
of Personal Information Protection Law (the
"PIPL"), which will come into effect on
November 1, 2021. This follows three previously released drafts of
this critical law, and comes ten months after the release of the
first draft on October 21, 2020 (see our prior article here).
When it comes into effect, the PIPL will be China's most
significant personal information privacy legislation to date,
becoming a cornerstone, along with the new Data Protection Law and
the older Cybersecurity Law, for personal information
("PI") regulation in China's
previously fractured data and privacy regulatory scheme. In nature,
the PIPL takes inspiration from other comprehensive privacy laws,
in particular the GDPR, and as such many concepts and requirements
in the PIPL will be familiar to global practitioners. But the PIPL
also has numerous unique requirements,
