China: Proposition to Speed up Legislation on Personal Information Protection Was Made to the Highest Legislative Body

With the development of big data industry, personal information leakage is on the rise. More and more multinationals start to be interested in compliance with local regulation on personal information. However, China has not specifically legislated on personal information protection, but only has some relevant provisions, standards and methods mentioned in some guidelines and legal documents with relatively lower authority. The National People’s Congress Conference and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (collectively the “Two Conferences”) have been summoned and upheld from March 5 to March 20. During this year’s Two Conferences, several National People’s Conference representatives and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference members proposed to speed up legislation on personal information protection to specify the basic principles and norms for the collection, utilization and processing of personal information, clarify the civil and criminal liability for misuse of personal information, and to provide remedial channels and procedures for personal information protection.