Marissa Xiao Dong 

In April 2011, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), jointly with the State General Administration of for Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), released a draft of “Information Security Technology – Guide of Personal Information Protection (Guidance)” for public comments. The Guidance is a further effort by MIIT to adopt and promote regulations for the protection of personal data after its release of a draft Guidance for Personal Information Protection for public comments in 2010. 

Compared with the previous draft, this new draft is prepared together with AQSIQ, and is prepared as GB/Z, which means China’s “national standard” but not compulsory standard. According to our communication with officials at MIIT, they have not yet decided how to proceed with the formal issuance of such Guidance, whether by MIIT itself as the 2010 draft, or together with AQSIQ as GB/Z as such new draft. Nevertheless, such efforts by MIIT and AQSIQ have revealed that personal data protection has become as more and more important issue in China, and different governmental authorities are attempting to use their separate and joint efforts to facilitate legislation in this area.

A detailed analysis of the proposed guidelines will be published as part of Supplement #6 of the Global Privacy & Security Law treatise.