Rethinking China's Approach to Privacy

"China is like 200 kilometres away from Bangladesh. Yet culturally and strategically, China sometimes feels very far away — because China operates completely differently from, for example, my neighbour India. India is like a working democracy, a democracy in progress. But China has achieved remarkable economic success in the last 30 years while carrying actual proven claims of human rights violations on its plate. It's a country that at the same time inspires awe and is a very enigmatic figure."

"If you actually read Chinese documents from the Chinese government — which is very hard to find in English translations, but with Google Translate you can basically upload them and pray to God the translation comes out fairly good enough — what you find is that they claim to be not a state-centric regime but a rights-based regime. Just like the EU. But with a different conception of rights."

"China has interim remarks on how to train generative AI, and they said the data used cannot violate socialist values. When I first read it I was like — socialist values? Everyone cites Reuters on this, and Reuters said: this is bad, this just wants to surveil people. But when you look at the document, the surveillance aspect is very small. Most of it is about socialist values. And within the footnotes, as an explanation, they say: not liking pornography is a socialist value. You cannot train AI on pornography because it violates socialist norms. And I was like — in what world is anti-pornography a socialist behaviour?"

"China is not just a state-centric country. Their documents keep saying: talk to your family, you have to give your parents' consent to process your data. They have a huge emphasis on society working as a whole. For example — and this is not related to digital law, but I have a lot of LGBT friends — the Chinese transgender law says that if you want to transition, you have to get approval from your family members. So Chinese policies are not just state-centric. They are very family-centric."

"When you forget about the values — if you see it completely from the outside — the approaches are very similar. Both the EU and China are trying to protect their market, regulate data flows, and impose standards on platforms. It's just that the definition of rights for EU and China is very different."

"Since China is here to stay, Europe should be more cautious than simply joining a world polarised between China and the US. If it really feels it's a mediator, then the mediation should be less one-sided. I'm not saying let's hug. I'm saying it should be a cooperation. Sceptical cooperation — especially when it comes to human rights. But Chinese companies should not be treated any more differently than US companies."