More than a dozen Chinese government bodies have jointly released guidelines on developing the country’s data security sector, reported South China Morning Post.
China plans to significantly shore up data security across major industries ranging from telecommunications to finance, as Beijing seeks to unlock the economic potential of the massive amount of data generated by its digital economy while protecting national security.
As data becomes an important production factor and a key engine of economic growth, data security is also becoming an integral part of the country’s national security, said the cybersecurity unit under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
On Friday, 16 Chinese governmental bodies – including the MIIT and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) – jointly issued specific guidelines,
The guidelines set a target for the country to grow its data security industry by 30 per cent each year, to more than 150 billion yuan (US$22.4 billion) by 2025.
During the same period, the government plans to build five provincial and state-level data security labs to achieve breakthroughs in key technologies and products. It also wants to establish five national data security industrial estates and develop several “little giants” – smaller businesses with special products and know-how in the sector – that are globally competitive.
As China pushes forward with efforts to use data to drive economic growth, however, it is also tightening control over its storage and access.
The Data Security Law, which came into effect in the country in September 2021, treats some domestically generated information as a matter of national security and requires each government body to supervise data security in their own realms.
Last month, the MIIT passed new rules mandating that important industrial data be stored within the country. Since early last year, Chinese companies seeking initial public offerings overseas are required to go through a cybersecurity review if the business involves the data of more than one million Chinese consumers.
Source: SCMP
