
China is Full Steam Ahead on Data Privacy
On January 8th, just a week after China’s Civil Code went into effect, the Hangzhou Internet Court heard and ruled on its first data privacy case. In this case, Sun, the defendant, sold more than 40,000 personal information records to Liu, who used this data for advertising. The records contained people’s full names, email addresses, and social media IDs. The procurator (like a U.S. federal prosecutor) determined that this action constituted an offense against the new privacy protections codified in the Civil Code. The Civil Code is a decades-long culmination of legal developments in China. It covers the full scope of civil law, such as property rights, contracts, and family law. But among these traditional pillars, the considerably large section reserved for the protection of personal information stands out. In Chapter Six of Part Four, the Civil Code defines privacy as “a natural person’s peace of life and the private […]