With the IT companies that provide services such as online shopping and cashless payments in China and collecting a large amount of personal information in mind, a law has been enacted that obliges the protection of customer's personal information.
Foreign companies are also targeted, which may affect Japanese companies.
In China, the "Personal Information Protection Law", which obliges companies to obtain consent when collecting and processing personal information from customers and to keep it to the minimum necessary, will be held on the 20th at the National People's Congress. It was approved and passed by the Managing Committee.
The number of Internet users in China is estimated to be close to 1 billion, and with the widespread use of services such as online shopping and cashless payment, IT companies that collect a large amount of personal information are becoming more influential, so the government Is tightening control, and this law also tightens the handling of information with IT companies in mind.
The law also covers foreign companies and requires companies that collect more than a certain amount of personal information to be examined by the authorities before they are stored in China and taken out of the country.
The Chinese government is becoming more cautious about leaking data to the United States and other countries, and a law restricting the export of important data held by companies will come into effect on September 1.
The Personal Information Protection Law will come into effect on November 1, and tightening regulations on data handling may affect Japanese companies expanding into China.