China’s Personal Information Protection Law
BMJ 2022; 379 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2022-072619 (Published 17 October 2022) Cite this as: BMJ 2022;379:e072619
- Daoxin Yin, researcher12,
- Xiaojie Li, lecturer34,
- Ruishuang Liu, associate professor3,
- Luxia Zhang, professor125,
- Qi-Min Zhan, professor12
- 1National Institute of Health Data Science at Peking University, Beijing, China;
- 2Advanced Institute of Information Technology, Peking University, Hangzhou, China
- 3Department of Medical Ethics and Law, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China
- 4Department of Situation and Policy, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China
- 5Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China
- Correspondence to: L Zhang zhanglx{at}bjmu.edu.cn
China’s first privacy law, the Personal Information Protection Law, went into effect on 1 November 2021.1 Driven by security and privacy concerns, the law established the legal framework and principles for processing the personal data of people residing within the territory of China. The law shares some of the principles and concepts in the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), although stated in broader terms.
Like GDPR, the Chinese law aims to empower individuals by giving them control over their data. Personal data are defined as “information related to an identified or identifiable natural person recorded electronically or by other means, but do not include anonymised information.”1 Health data, classified as sensitive, must be processed through a rigorously regulated pathway, with clear justification for the proposed use and unambiguous consent. Importantly, while the new law does not cover fully anonymised data, it does apply to data that have been “de-identified” since such data can be reattributed to a particular person through other sources of information.
Unlike GDPR, the Chinese law provides …
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