Here is China’s plan to centralize control over the data
China wants to concentrate all data responsibilities in a single, new agency: it will deal with governance and cybersecurity. Here's what we know
According to Wall Street Journal sources, China plans to create a central agency dedicated to managing data flows in and out of the country.
WHAT WE KNOW
Beijing will thus channel into a single office the skills currently scattered among a multitude of different entities, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the agency that monitors and censors content on the national Internet.
The new agency is expected to be discussed and approved at the Communist Party's National Congress on March 13.
XI WANT MORE CONTROL
In recent years, China has insisted a lot on the need to strengthen state control over the large – and precious: they are the nourishment for artificial intelligence, for example – data quantities generated by some productive sectors, obviously starting with the digital industry .
In parallel, Bloomberg explains, President Xi Jinping wants to consolidate the Communist Party's grip on the economy, the second largest in the world, by modifying the bureaucratic apparatus and providing the government with greater influence over private companies .
HOW IS CHINA'S ECONOMY
However, China's economy is going through a very particular moment. In 2022 it recorded the lowest growth rate in almost forty years , mainly due to the strict policy of containment of coronavirus infections (the so-called "zero-COVID"). And she finds herself having to deal with the measures imposed by the United States to limit her access to advanced technologies, such as microchips .
DISFICIENCY TOWARDS CHINESE BIG TECH
The Chinese authorities are wary of private technology companies, such as Ant Group and Didi Global, which collect huge amounts of data ( big data , in jargon) on online activity and on the movements of citizens and government officials.
Beijing has thus launched, since October 2020, a "rectification campaign" against these companies with the aim of bringing the digital sector back under state control. The strict regulations have only been eased in recent months, probably so as not to further penalize a sector that is decisive for the economy.
WHAT THE CHINESE DATA AGENCY WILL DO
The new data regulatory agency will have the authority to investigate malicious use of algorithms (to combat Internet addiction, for example), to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and to determine whether multinational companies in China can send the data collected in the country abroad.
The Wall Street Journal writes that it is unclear how existing entities, such as the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, will relate to the new agency.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/cina-agenzia-centrale-dati/ on Wed, 08 Mar 2023 05:18:25 +0000.