CAICT Drafts Secure Data Flow Industry Convention

On April 19, the China Academy of Information Communications Technology (CAICT) held a seminar with officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), as well as representatives from ICT companies, credit agencies and industry associations to review the DraftSecure Data Flow Industry Convention, with an aim to improve China's big data market development. CAICT is the lead drafter of this Convention, under the guidance of CAC and MIIT. The Convention has participation from 49 Chinese entities, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Qihoo 360, Didi Technology, Meituan and China Academy of Sciences Information Engineering Institute, among others. The target date for final release of the Convention and the signing ceremony is April 27 at the 2016 Big Data Industry Conference. 

 

China has not issued relevant laws or regulations in this field due to contentious issues such as data ownership, data trading, data security and technology applications in vertical industries. The purpose of this Convention is to address the lack of established laws and to encourage data flows in China as well as outline industry principles on data collection, data flow, data security, privacy protection, data ownership, data sharing, big data service improvement, etc. 

 

Major concerns include the scope and implementation of this new Convention, specifically with regards to what the term "data" refers to and if a certification program will be introduced to facilitate compliance.