Report by Amey Haldankar
Delhi, Aug 25: On 20th August, the National People’s Congress of China passed a law that aims to protect people’s personal data.
This law is known as PIPL or ‘Personal Information Protection Law’ and will come into effect from November 1st, 2021.
This law has 74 articles in 3 sections and 8 chapters.
What is PIPL?
PIPL or Personal Information Protection Law is expected to protect people’s personal information by preventing online companies from collecting personal data.
This law is similar to EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) but there are some minor differences.
This law stops companies from using personal data for user profiling. With user profiling, companies set different prices for the same product, based on the user’s shopping history.
It also ensures that companies collect only that data which is required for their work. It lays down rules for collecting and storing the data of Chinese citizens. This data cannot be stored on a server outside China.
If any company breaks the law, it would have to pay a fine up to 50 million Yuan (57 crore Rs), or 5% of their turnover.
The Data Security Law and the Personal Data Protection Law are two strong laws passed by China to ensure the protection of the data of the Chinese people.
The History
The idea for this law can be traced back to January, when China Consumers Association accused the internet companies which were violating customer’s rights by misusing their personal information and ‘bullying’ them into purchasing their products.
“Consumers are being squeezed by data algorithms and becoming the targets of technical bullying,” the association said.
