China has very strict laws to protect data privacy: Senior Chinese official

China has "very strict laws" to protect personal information in the big data industry, a senior cyberspace administration official said here, amid increasing global concerns over privacy in the big data business. The Chinese government is a major collector and user of privacy data. According to IHS Markit, a London-based market research firm, China had 176 million surveillance cameras in operation in 2016 and the number was set to reach 626 million by 2020.

As part of its efforts to crack down on misuse of private data, China's national cyberspace administration in May introduced a new data protection law, further tightening regulations amid growing data privacy concerns. In an interview to PTI, Chen Benrong, Deputy Director of Guizhou Provincial Cyberspace Administration, said, "In China, we have very strict laws to protect our civil privacy, especially in the sector of the big data industry. We have exclusively included big data privacy into our concerns."

Big data is a field that treats ways to analyse, systematically extract information from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software. The use of big data has raised concerns that sensitive personal information can be compromised.

"We need to make sure that our data is open to the public and it needs to be processed and classified, and then we can decide whether it is for scientific research and to maximise the security of our people's privacy," Chen said. When asked about the concerns over the localisation of data by Chinese companies, Benrong said China has the same strict laws for international data protection as well.

At a recent 'International Big Data Expo', which concluded on May 29, China showcased its latest scientific and technological achievements in the big data industry. Several experts at the conference have suggested that customers should have the right to know what they are giving up and what they are getting back.

Nobel Prize Winner and technological expert Paul M Romer had said with these two principles, the technology of big data can help everyone and produce a better life for the whole society. In the partnership with Indian companies, Chen said there has been better collaboration between companies of both the countries.

"Many Chinese companies have established collaboration with Indian enterprises," he said. Nearly 15 Indian companies were among the 470 companies which had participated in the Big Data Expo, which was a flagship event of the Chinese government.

Addressing the participants, Wang Chen, a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, had said big data is the next stage in the data revolution, which ensures sustainable development.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)