Data protection is already quite complicated in Europe. If two new Chinese data protection laws are added to the mix, it will be difficult to comply with all the requirements. What data does a company have to store in China according to Chinese rules? What data is it not allowed to store according to EU rules? The contradictions between the legislations are foreseeable, as Falk Steiner reports. While the details are still unclear, the amount of the fines is already known. Those responsible face fines of up to €125,000. Consultants and lawyers will profit a lot from the laws.
Next week it’s time. The Chinese Communist Party will celebrate its centennial. No cost is spared for that. Xi Jinping has even given his party a gigantic new museum that shows its history in a particularly favorable light. Johnny Erling explains what symbols are hidden in the architecture and details of the temple-like building. The post office in the museum, for example, bears an exclusive postal code: 100100. Xi shows foresight here, as the centenary of the People’s Republic will also be celebrated as early as 2050. As a precaution, 50 speeches, directives, and letters from Xi himself are among the exhibits so that the curators will not be left without material.
Wishing you a relaxing weekend.
China wants to regulate the handling of data with two laws at once. This is in line with the trend to give more and more areas of law a clearer framework. But as always, the state reserves considerable influence despite the apparent increase in transparency.
The new data security law and the upcoming data protection law are further signs that the state leadership wants to contain the de facto power of technology corporations and also oblige foreign companies to cooperate. They are a systematically logical building block for China’s path to digital sovereignty, which is being increasingly tackled, not least under the impression of the economic sanctions imposed by the US. The People’s Republic is thus creating a law that both foreign and domestic companies can formally invoke. At least on paper, this creates legal certainty, which European representatives have often called for.
The two laws are:
The first law, the Data Security Law, has already been passed and will come into effect on September 1, 2021. It obliges data processors to comply with minimum standards for IT security. In return, they are obliged to cooperate with the competent authorities. It regulates not only the security of personal data but also the handling of data without any direct connection to people. The exact minimum standards to be observed in the future depend on the industry. The responsible regulatory bodies and regions are to issue corresponding regulations. But industry organizations are also to propose industry-specific cybersecurity specifications, according to the law.
However, some minimum standards have already been set: for example, the reporting of security incidents and an incident response plan for data security problems will become mandatory, and multi-level procedures for the technical protection of data will also be prescribed – all without being precisely specified. If the requirements are not met, there is the threat of severe fines or even the withdrawal of the operating license. Additionally, there are fines of up to one million yuan (currently a good €125,000) for responsible persons.
A particular challenge for domestic and foreign players in China is likely to be the so-called “core data“. Whoever processes it is to be subject to special requirements. This also includes close cooperation with the security authorities.
Experts expect that a great many companies doing business in China will be affected by the new rules. In any case, more industries than before will be subject to state influence in the name of security interests, says Dennis-Kenji Kipker of the consulting firm Certavo. “For this purpose, a classification system with different levels of severity will be defined,” Kipker explained to China.Table.
It has not yet been determined which industries are affected and how. “But those that process a particularly large amount of data and also use innovative technical tools are likely to be affected,” says Kipker. These include, for example, cloud services or the evaluation of data using AI, for example for scoring and analysis purposes.
The telecommunications and financial sectors are likely to be the most affected. However, the automotive industry, medical device manufacturers or agribusiness and other increasingly data-collecting sectors could also be included here. Among other things, the law provides for obligations to store data in China. However, the more detailed requirements will only be defined in measures yet to be determined, i.e., the administrative instructions with which the authorities implement the law.
However, it is somewhat unclear what this means for companies that store data in China or transmit data there. Who will have to store what in China in the future, and what will have to be passed on to whom? This depends on the individual case, says data law expert Kipker. “General recommendations that are legally secure across all industries can therefore not be given.” He advises potentially affected parties to keep an eye on the development of legislation. Companies should also pay particular attention to whether they are not already forced by existing laws to store data locally in China. “Many companies are not aware of this,” observes Kipker.
The second law is still in progress. This is the Personal Information Protection Law, two drafts of which have already been discussed publicly. It will pose further problems for companies and politicians. As part of a so-called adequacy decision, the EU Commission will have to examine the extent to which the new Chinese legal framework offers sufficient guarantees for the lawful storage of European data in China.
In some parts, the Chinese law will largely be a copy of the European General Data Protection Regulation – but with significantly different regulatory content as soon as it concerns public interests. In formal legal terms, China’s data protection law will nevertheless go beyond the level of protection in the USA. There, despite years of discussion, there will probably be no data protection law at the federal level, even with the newly elected Congress. Many data transfers to the United States are currently taking place on a legally questionable basis after the European Court of Justice found two data protection agreements to be inadequate, and data protection regulators are now stepping up proceedings. In business with China, many companies are currently relying on the so-called standard contractual clauses, with which the EU aims to create legal certainty for data transfers to those countries that do not have a level of data protection comparable to that in Europe.
But this is a thoroughly tricky path. Hesse’s Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Alexander Rossnagel, explains in response to a question from China.Table: “For data transfers, there is a need to go beyond standard data protection clauses and other legal security instruments to provide additional safeguards for fundamental rights of EU citizens.” He said the watchdog was registering efforts there to introduce new data protection laws. “But about the access rights of intelligence services and security authorities to personal data and the legal protection against such encroachments on fundamental rights, every controller must inform himself.” This can be done, for example, by asking his trade association, he said. Violations of the obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can result in severe financial penalties – for companies, this could mean that the legal requirements in both jurisdictions are simultaneously unfulfillable.
Data law specialist Kipker warns companies not to be too confident that the new laws will significantly simplify the complicated situation: “Although the Data Security Law and the PIPL adopt various principles from European data protection law, especially the latter law, this does not necessarily lead to better data protection in the PRC in practice as well,” says Kipker. “While data processing by private entities is more tightly regulated than ever with the current legislative proposals, the extensive access powers by the Chinese state still remain.” In case of doubt, legal assistance should not be organized from the EU or Germany, but directly from China. For Kipker, it is essential that “despite the new laws, China has a completely different understanding of data protection than we know”.
Long lines of waiting people formed in front of newsstands in many Hong Kong neighborhoods. The rush was for the last issue of the newspaper “Apple Daily“. After 26 years, the tabloid has now gone out of business. The authorities recently exerted massive pressure on the China-critical newspaper founded by publisher Jimmy Lai. After the board of directors of the listed parent company, Next Digital announced the end, the finances of Apple Daily were also frozen (China.Table reported).
In a farewell letter, deputy editor-in-chief Chan Pui Man said, “Apple Daily is dead”. He also made the last point that “freedom of the press has become a victim of tyranny”. Chan was arrested last week. Police had arrested the editor-in-chief, publisher, and three other executives for more than 30 reports. They allegedly called for foreign sanctions in violation of the National Security Law, which was passed last summer. niw
Seeing the anniversary building for the party “from the air” immediately reveals a secret. Its construction incorporates the shape of the character gong (工), reveals the Xinhua news agency. Gong is a linguistic shorthand for work, or for the working class, of which the Chinese Communist Party is known to be the forerunner.
Visitors approaching the imposing complex in the north of Beijing by the usual route on foot have a harder time recognizing the proletarian nature of the newly built “Museum of the Communist Party“. They are looking at a “traditional Chinese colonnade structure” with six mighty columns on the north facade and just as many pillars on the south facade. Eight columns each support the two east-west sides. The numbers six and eight also serve as symbols of good luck in Chinese. They express wishes for good fortune, which should accompany the party forever. The building has a total of 28 columns, the same number that the party needed in years after its founding in 1921 to conquer China and proclaim the People’s Republic in 1949.
Everything about the new museum is symbolically overloaded. Behind it is the intention of its architects and the master builder advising them, China’s state and party leader Xi Jinping. It is his first signature building. There is also a calculation behind the choice of location in the capital’s Olympic Park. The 150,000-square-meter exhibition hall sits on Beijing’s meridian. This once imperial north-south axis, which has been nominated for Unesco World Heritage status, continues from the Temple of Heaven via Tiananmen Gate, the Gugong Imperial Palace, and the Drum Tower to the present-day Olympic site in the north.
The setting could not be more fitting for a major museum in honor of the party that rules China alone and, after 100 years of existence, is now the largest CP in the world with 92 million members. The imperial address also includes its exclusive postal code “100100”. It stands for the CP’s birthday, Xinhua writes, and also “for its boldly pursued two-century goals.” By 2050, the future 100th birthday of the People’s Republic, the nation is to be resurrected to its former greatness, and China is to be a world power.
No expense was spared for Beijing for the museum, which China’s media touted as the capital’s “Hongsi Dibiao” (红色地标), or “red milestone”. “Nearly 50,000 people and more than 200 work units” were involved in the construction from the laying of the foundation stone on August 26, 2018, to its completion in May 2021. The most famous state sculptors sculpted from white marble the five sculpture groups set up around the museum. Hundreds of heroic figures gather around the party flag. Thematically, they are divided, just like the exhibits in the exhibition, according to the CP history, which is divided into four stages. At the beginning is the “belief” in the communist cause (信仰). The final main section is devoted to the present under Xi’s leadership and an auspicious future of his “new era of Chinese socialism”. This stage is called “Following the Dream” (追梦).
The “spirituality” embodied by the museum is intentional. From the outset, Xi called for “dignified and awe-inspiring architecture” in April 2018. Unlike other exhibitions, the Party Museum should “light up the eyes of its viewers”.
Reviewing the construction history, Xinhua writes: “Xi stressed the need to build a sacred temple complex that will become a spiritual home for Communist Party members to be educated here and receive their Communist baptism”(强调要建成一个神圣殿堂，成为共产党员受教育受洗礼的精神家园). The exhibition planning should have encouraged visitors to “always remain true to the Party’s original ideals and mission”. That was the “red line”.
State broadcaster CCTV featured the museum’s opening as the lead story on its main newscast two days in a row, on June 18 and 19. At the inauguration, Party leader Xi had his Politburo, fists raised, recite the Party oath to “fight for communism lifelong”. It was déjà vu after he had already taken the oath publicly in late 2017 when he visited the Shanghai CP Museum. That was shortly after the end of the 19th Party Congress, where he pushed for his “Xi Jinping thinking for the new era of socialism” to be included in the party statutes amended for the purpose.
Soon after, Xi ordered the construction of the Beijing Museum for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CP in 2018. He made planning, design, and execution a top priority. “Xi attached great importance to the construction of the exhibition hall, planned and supervised it, and received reports and instructions on its progress many times.”
The party is silent about the cost of the project. The block-like monument combines the architectural styles of the Great Hall of the People and the Mao Mausoleum. No surprise. The same “Beijing Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd.” that once built the columned Great Hall for Mao in 1959 to mark the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic was commissioned to build the new museum.
There are 50 letters, directives, speech manuscripts, and objects of all kinds from Xi Jinping himself on display. The most valuable exhibit purchased abroad is by Karl Marx, a handwritten notebook used by him in Brussels in 1845. New insights into China’s party are not to be expected at the museum. The CP does not confront its own narrative with the facts. Especially not under Xi, who has condemned critical historical reappraisal and coming to terms with the past as “historical nihilism”. The museum’s construction is part of what the Wall Street Journal called the largest ongoing propaganda and education campaign to rewrite Chinese history since Mao’s time.
Is communism atheistic? In principle, yes, but in China, the state grants freedom of religion, at least formally. That makes such arrangements of symbols possible: the red flag with star flutters proudly in front of this Catholic church. In the Communist state, of course, it’s clear who ultimately has the upper hand.
Data protection is already quite complicated in Europe. If two new Chinese data protection laws are added to the mix, it will be difficult to comply with all the requirements. What data does a company have to store in China according to Chinese rules? What data is it not allowed to store according to EU rules? The contradictions between the legislations are foreseeable, as Falk Steiner reports. While the details are still unclear, the amount of the fines is already known. Those responsible face fines of up to €125,000. Consultants and lawyers will profit a lot from the laws.
Next week it’s time. The Chinese Communist Party will celebrate its centennial. No cost is spared for that. Xi Jinping has even given his party a gigantic new museum that shows its history in a particularly favorable light. Johnny Erling explains what symbols are hidden in the architecture and details of the temple-like building. The post office in the museum, for example, bears an exclusive postal code: 100100. Xi shows foresight here, as the centenary of the People’s Republic will also be celebrated as early as 2050. As a precaution, 50 speeches, directives, and letters from Xi himself are among the exhibits so that the curators will not be left without material.
Wishing you a relaxing weekend.
China wants to regulate the handling of data with two laws at once. This is in line with the trend to give more and more areas of law a clearer framework. But as always, the state reserves considerable influence despite the apparent increase in transparency.
The new data security law and the upcoming data protection law are further signs that the state leadership wants to contain the de facto power of technology corporations and also oblige foreign companies to cooperate. They are a systematically logical building block for China’s path to digital sovereignty, which is being increasingly tackled, not least under the impression of the economic sanctions imposed by the US. The People’s Republic is thus creating a law that both foreign and domestic companies can formally invoke. At least on paper, this creates legal certainty, which European representatives have often called for.
The two laws are:
The first law, the Data Security Law, has already been passed and will come into effect on September 1, 2021. It obliges data processors to comply with minimum standards for IT security. In return, they are obliged to cooperate with the competent authorities. It regulates not only the security of personal data but also the handling of data without any direct connection to people. The exact minimum standards to be observed in the future depend on the industry. The responsible regulatory bodies and regions are to issue corresponding regulations. But industry organizations are also to propose industry-specific cybersecurity specifications, according to the law.
However, some minimum standards have already been set: for example, the reporting of security incidents and an incident response plan for data security problems will become mandatory, and multi-level procedures for the technical protection of data will also be prescribed – all without being precisely specified. If the requirements are not met, there is the threat of severe fines or even the withdrawal of the operating license. Additionally, there are fines of up to one million yuan (currently a good €125,000) for responsible persons.
A particular challenge for domestic and foreign players in China is likely to be the so-called “core data“. Whoever processes it is to be subject to special requirements. This also includes close cooperation with the security authorities.
Experts expect that a great many companies doing business in China will be affected by the new rules. In any case, more industries than before will be subject to state influence in the name of security interests, says Dennis-Kenji Kipker of the consulting firm Certavo. “For this purpose, a classification system with different levels of severity will be defined,” Kipker explained to China.Table.
It has not yet been determined which industries are affected and how. “But those that process a particularly large amount of data and also use innovative technical tools are likely to be affected,” says Kipker. These include, for example, cloud services or the evaluation of data using AI, for example for scoring and analysis purposes.
The telecommunications and financial sectors are likely to be the most affected. However, the automotive industry, medical device manufacturers or agribusiness and other increasingly data-collecting sectors could also be included here. Among other things, the law provides for obligations to store data in China. However, the more detailed requirements will only be defined in measures yet to be determined, i.e., the administrative instructions with which the authorities implement the law.
However, it is somewhat unclear what this means for companies that store data in China or transmit data there. Who will have to store what in China in the future, and what will have to be passed on to whom? This depends on the individual case, says data law expert Kipker. “General recommendations that are legally secure across all industries can therefore not be given.” He advises potentially affected parties to keep an eye on the development of legislation. Companies should also pay particular attention to whether they are not already forced by existing laws to store data locally in China. “Many companies are not aware of this,” observes Kipker.
The second law is still in progress. This is the Personal Information Protection Law, two drafts of which have already been discussed publicly. It will pose further problems for companies and politicians. As part of a so-called adequacy decision, the EU Commission will have to examine the extent to which the new Chinese legal framework offers sufficient guarantees for the lawful storage of European data in China.
In some parts, the Chinese law will largely be a copy of the European General Data Protection Regulation – but with significantly different regulatory content as soon as it concerns public interests. In formal legal terms, China’s data protection law will nevertheless go beyond the level of protection in the USA. There, despite years of discussion, there will probably be no data protection law at the federal level, even with the newly elected Congress. Many data transfers to the United States are currently taking place on a legally questionable basis after the European Court of Justice found two data protection agreements to be inadequate, and data protection regulators are now stepping up proceedings. In business with China, many companies are currently relying on the so-called standard contractual clauses, with which the EU aims to create legal certainty for data transfers to those countries that do not have a level of data protection comparable to that in Europe.
But this is a thoroughly tricky path. Hesse’s Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Alexander Rossnagel, explains in response to a question from China.Table: “For data transfers, there is a need to go beyond standard data protection clauses and other legal security instruments to provide additional safeguards for fundamental rights of EU citizens.” He said the watchdog was registering efforts there to introduce new data protection laws. “But about the access rights of intelligence services and security authorities to personal data and the legal protection against such encroachments on fundamental rights, every controller must inform himself.” This can be done, for example, by asking his trade association, he said. Violations of the obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can result in severe financial penalties – for companies, this could mean that the legal requirements in both jurisdictions are simultaneously unfulfillable.
Data law specialist Kipker warns companies not to be too confident that the new laws will significantly simplify the complicated situation: “Although the Data Security Law and the PIPL adopt various principles from European data protection law, especially the latter law, this does not necessarily lead to better data protection in the PRC in practice as well,” says Kipker. “While data processing by private entities is more tightly regulated than ever with the current legislative proposals, the extensive access powers by the Chinese state still remain.” In case of doubt, legal assistance should not be organized from the EU or Germany, but directly from China. For Kipker, it is essential that “despite the new laws, China has a completely different understanding of data protection than we know”.
Long lines of waiting people formed in front of newsstands in many Hong Kong neighborhoods. The rush was for the last issue of the newspaper “Apple Daily“. After 26 years, the tabloid has now gone out of business. The authorities recently exerted massive pressure on the China-critical newspaper founded by publisher Jimmy Lai. After the board of directors of the listed parent company, Next Digital announced the end, the finances of Apple Daily were also frozen (China.Table reported).
In a farewell letter, deputy editor-in-chief Chan Pui Man said, “Apple Daily is dead”. He also made the last point that “freedom of the press has become a victim of tyranny”. Chan was arrested last week. Police had arrested the editor-in-chief, publisher, and three other executives for more than 30 reports. They allegedly called for foreign sanctions in violation of the National Security Law, which was passed last summer. niw
Seeing the anniversary building for the party “from the air” immediately reveals a secret. Its construction incorporates the shape of the character gong (工), reveals the Xinhua news agency. Gong is a linguistic shorthand for work, or for the working class, of which the Chinese Communist Party is known to be the forerunner.
Visitors approaching the imposing complex in the north of Beijing by the usual route on foot have a harder time recognizing the proletarian nature of the newly built “Museum of the Communist Party“. They are looking at a “traditional Chinese colonnade structure” with six mighty columns on the north facade and just as many pillars on the south facade. Eight columns each support the two east-west sides. The numbers six and eight also serve as symbols of good luck in Chinese. They express wishes for good fortune, which should accompany the party forever. The building has a total of 28 columns, the same number that the party needed in years after its founding in 1921 to conquer China and proclaim the People’s Republic in 1949.
Everything about the new museum is symbolically overloaded. Behind it is the intention of its architects and the master builder advising them, China’s state and party leader Xi Jinping. It is his first signature building. There is also a calculation behind the choice of location in the capital’s Olympic Park. The 150,000-square-meter exhibition hall sits on Beijing’s meridian. This once imperial north-south axis, which has been nominated for Unesco World Heritage status, continues from the Temple of Heaven via Tiananmen Gate, the Gugong Imperial Palace, and the Drum Tower to the present-day Olympic site in the north.
The setting could not be more fitting for a major museum in honor of the party that rules China alone and, after 100 years of existence, is now the largest CP in the world with 92 million members. The imperial address also includes its exclusive postal code “100100”. It stands for the CP’s birthday, Xinhua writes, and also “for its boldly pursued two-century goals.” By 2050, the future 100th birthday of the People’s Republic, the nation is to be resurrected to its former greatness, and China is to be a world power.
No expense was spared for Beijing for the museum, which China’s media touted as the capital’s “Hongsi Dibiao” (红色地标), or “red milestone”. “Nearly 50,000 people and more than 200 work units” were involved in the construction from the laying of the foundation stone on August 26, 2018, to its completion in May 2021. The most famous state sculptors sculpted from white marble the five sculpture groups set up around the museum. Hundreds of heroic figures gather around the party flag. Thematically, they are divided, just like the exhibits in the exhibition, according to the CP history, which is divided into four stages. At the beginning is the “belief” in the communist cause (信仰). The final main section is devoted to the present under Xi’s leadership and an auspicious future of his “new era of Chinese socialism”. This stage is called “Following the Dream” (追梦).
The “spirituality” embodied by the museum is intentional. From the outset, Xi called for “dignified and awe-inspiring architecture” in April 2018. Unlike other exhibitions, the Party Museum should “light up the eyes of its viewers”.
Reviewing the construction history, Xinhua writes: “Xi stressed the need to build a sacred temple complex that will become a spiritual home for Communist Party members to be educated here and receive their Communist baptism”(强调要建成一个神圣殿堂，成为共产党员受教育受洗礼的精神家园). The exhibition planning should have encouraged visitors to “always remain true to the Party’s original ideals and mission”. That was the “red line”.
State broadcaster CCTV featured the museum’s opening as the lead story on its main newscast two days in a row, on June 18 and 19. At the inauguration, Party leader Xi had his Politburo, fists raised, recite the Party oath to “fight for communism lifelong”. It was déjà vu after he had already taken the oath publicly in late 2017 when he visited the Shanghai CP Museum. That was shortly after the end of the 19th Party Congress, where he pushed for his “Xi Jinping thinking for the new era of socialism” to be included in the party statutes amended for the purpose.
Soon after, Xi ordered the construction of the Beijing Museum for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CP in 2018. He made planning, design, and execution a top priority. “Xi attached great importance to the construction of the exhibition hall, planned and supervised it, and received reports and instructions on its progress many times.”
The party is silent about the cost of the project. The block-like monument combines the architectural styles of the Great Hall of the People and the Mao Mausoleum. No surprise. The same “Beijing Architectural Design and Research Institute Co., Ltd.” that once built the columned Great Hall for Mao in 1959 to mark the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic was commissioned to build the new museum.
There are 50 letters, directives, speech manuscripts, and objects of all kinds from Xi Jinping himself on display. The most valuable exhibit purchased abroad is by Karl Marx, a handwritten notebook used by him in Brussels in 1845. New insights into China’s party are not to be expected at the museum. The CP does not confront its own narrative with the facts. Especially not under Xi, who has condemned critical historical reappraisal and coming to terms with the past as “historical nihilism”. The museum’s construction is part of what the Wall Street Journal called the largest ongoing propaganda and education campaign to rewrite Chinese history since Mao’s time.
Is communism atheistic? In principle, yes, but in China, the state grants freedom of religion, at least formally. That makes such arrangements of symbols possible: the red flag with star flutters proudly in front of this Catholic church. In the Communist state, of course, it’s clear who ultimately has the upper hand.
