[Editor to fill: 200-word overview of how the Data Economy domain differs from data security and personal-information protection — the focus here is circulation and ownership rather than protection and consent.]
§ DOMAIN · DATA ECONOMY
Data Economy.
数据要素与数据产权
China's emerging regulatory framework for treating data as an economic factor of production — public-data resources, data-property rights, data-asset registration, and the rules governing how data can be authorized for operation, traded, and circulated. Distinct from data security and personal-information protection, this domain tracks the rules that turn data into a tradeable asset.
The legal corpus.
13 laws.
- Data Twenty Opinions Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Building a Basic Data System to Better Play the Role of Data Elements 中共中央 国务院关于构建数据基础制度更好发挥数据要素作用的意见
- RULE Data Property Rights Registration Work Guide (Trial) 数据产权登记工作指引（试行）
- Data Terms Batch 1 Explanation of Common Terms in the Field of Data (First Batch) 数据领域常用名词解释（第一批）
- Data Terms Batch 2 Explanation of Common Terms in the Field of Data (Second Batch) 数据领域常用名词解释（第二批）
- AUCL Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国反不正当竞争法
- RULE Administrative Measures for the Supervision of Live-Streaming E-Commerce 直播电商监督管理办法
- Platform Rules Measures Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Trading Platform Rules 网络交易平台规则监督管理办法
- Shenzhen Data Regulations Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Data Regulations 深圳经济特区数据条例
- Pharma-Data Supplier Credit-Compliance Rules (Draft) Implementing Rules for the Credit-Compliance Certification and Assessment of Pharmaceutical-Data Supplier Entities (Shenzhen Data Exchange — Draft / Redline) 医药数据供方主体信用合规认证评估实施细则（深圳数据交易所·征求意见/红线稿）
- RULE Interim Measures for the Registration and Administration of Public Data Resources 公共数据资源登记管理暂行办法
- RULE Implementation Specifications for Authorized Operation of Public Data Resources (Trial) 公共数据资源授权运营实施规范（试行）
- Platform Pricing Rules Rules on Pricing Conduct by Internet Platforms 互联网平台价格行为规则
- AI Agent Implementation Opinions Implementation Opinions on the Standardized Application and Innovative Development of AI Agents 智能体规范应用与创新发展实施意见
In this domain.
41 briefs.
- § 01 · CROSS-BORDER
The Negative-List Map, Region by Region: Ten Zones, Two Models, and the Year Data Export Went Province-Wide
As of July 2026, ten Chinese regions — nine free-trade zones plus the Hainan Free Trade Port — have published data-export negative lists under Article 6 of the 2024 Cross-border Data Flows Provisions, and this year Beijing and Shanghai took the mechanism province- and city-wide, off the FTZ footprint entirely. DCC's roundup maps the full set: which sectors each zone lists (from Tianjin's 13 commodity categories to Guangdong's smart-manufacturing and personal-credit fields, Chongqing's intelligent-connected-vehicle chain, and Jiangsu's biopharma-only list), the two management models that have crystallized — pre-export filing versus Shanghai and Guangdong's 'transfer-first, report-after' — and how an overseas team should read the map. Compiled from the CAC's national negative-list index and each region's official notice, and paired with DCC's new downloadable negative-list registry.
- § 02 · E-COMMERCE-LAW
China's 2026 Draft E-Commerce Law Amendment: From Marketplace Transactions to Platform-Economy Governance
On July 4, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Commerce released the Draft Amendment to the E-Commerce Law for public comment, with comments due August 4, 2026. The draft has 20 articles and, according to the official notice and Xinhua Q&A, moves in five directions: expanding the law's adjustment scope beyond platforms and in-platform operators to other platform-economy participants; strengthening the platform responsibility system with richer, more graduated regulatory tools; building an integrated supervision mechanism for cross-sector platform operations, including consistent online/offline business supervision and stronger department and central-local coordination; targeting prominent illegal conduct in e-commerce; and deepening open cooperation by aligning rules, regulation, management and standards with international practice, supporting industry self-discipline and orderly outbound expansion, and adding countermeasure tools to protect Chinese enterprises. DCC reads the amendment as an attempt to reposition the E-Commerce Law from a transaction/platform statute into a platform-economy governance statute, with operational implications for platform rulemaking, merchant and worker protection, consumer governance, data/network security clauses, competition compliance, and outbound platform expansion.
- § 03 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
China's Data Property Rights Registration Guide Is Final: The Draft-to-Trial Diff
On 1 July 2026, the National Data Administration issued the Data Property Rights Registration Work Guide (Trial), converting its April 2026 consultation draft into China's first national framework for registering the Right to Hold Data, Right to Use Data and Right to Operate Data. The final text keeps the same six-chapter, 42-article structure, but the diff is not cosmetic: security and public-interest gates are stronger; derived data is now defined; the national infrastructure shifts from a service platform to a service system; registrars face tighter qualification, disclosure, annual-evaluation, change-reporting and exit rules; public-data registration is softened from mandatory to conditional/voluntary wording; unclear contractual entitlement receives a cure path; evidence preservation, not certificate issuance, now starts the validity period; and certificate use is sharpened for data-asset balance-sheet entry, financing guarantees and valuation-based equity contribution.
- § 04 · DATA-ECONOMY
Li Yang: Why 'Data Rights-Confirmation' Is a Category Error — Dynamic Data Can't Be a Registration Object, and AUCL Article 13 Is the Better Path
DCC's summary of an opinion piece by Li Yang (李扬), professor at China University of Political Science and Law, arguing that the whole project of 'data rights-confirmation' (数据确权) — and the data-IP registration pilots run under it — rests on a category error. In Chinese IP law, 'confirmation' (确权) is the authoritative validation of an already-existing right, and it presupposes three things data lacks: a determinate object, defined rights content, and clear boundaries. Civil Code Art. 127 only defers the question; 'data IP' is a policy concept, not a legal one; and data is co-produced by many parties, so registration proves who submitted data, not who owns it. Li Yang's sharpest move is the dynamic-object problem: registration regimes (real estate, IP, equity) require a persistently stable object, but data's value lives in continuous updating, so the data at registration is never the data in dispute — and blockchain/hash/timestamp '存证' only fix a historical snapshot, never the living data stream, confusing proof-of-existence with object-identification. He concludes that registration's real functions are evidentiary and publicity/transaction-support — not rights-confirmation — and that data governance should move from rights-confirmation to interest-protection, from static-rights thinking to dynamic-competition thinking, protecting commercial-data interests under Article 13 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. DCC's read for overseas counsel, against the data-IP registration regime and the Beijing Internet Court's first AUCL Article 13 ruling.
- § 05 · ANTI-UNFAIR-COMPETITION
How the Beijing Internet Court Found a Platform 'Lawfully Held' Its Data Under the New AUCL Article 13 — and Where It Meets the 'Right to Hold Data'
The Beijing Internet Court's 30 April 2026 judgment — the first published application of the data clause (Article 13) of the 2025-revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law, effective 15 October 2025 — turns on one threshold question: did the plaintiff platform 'lawfully hold' (合法持有) the scraped career data? DCC walks through exactly how the court got to 'yes', step by step: the data originated as personal information collected with user consent under the platform's Service Agreement and Privacy Policy (no unlawful processing on record); the operator's build-and-run investment aggregated scattered records into a dataset with standalone economic value; and that dataset is the foundational input for the platform's matching business and competitive advantage. From those three findings the court derives its operative definition — data lawfully collected/stored/used, formed through substantial investment, and capable of generating business benefit or competitive advantage — and holds that the defendant's crawler-and-resale scheme, circumventing login and access controls, was unfair competition (¥200,000 + ¥30,000-plus in costs). The brief then takes up the doctrinal question: does Article 13's 'lawfully held data' correspond to the 'right to hold data' (数据持有权) in the Data 20 Articles' three-rights framework? The answer is a functional yes — the court is enforcing the holding right's purely defensive content, exactly as Hong Yanqing's analysis predicted AUCL Article 13 would — but not a doctrinal one: it builds a competition-tort interest on investment and lawful sourcing, deliberately sidestepping any claim that data is a typed property right. DCC's case brief for overseas counsel, drawn against the earlier AUCL Article 2 general-clause data cases.
- § 06 · PUBLIC-DATA
Guangdong Prices the Public-Data Operator Like a Utility: Inside the Province's Authorized-Operation Price-Management Measures
On 12 May 2026 the Guangdong DRC and the Guangdong Administration of Government Services and Data issued the Guangdong Province Public Data Resource Authorized-Operation Price Management Measures — one of the first provincial implementations of the national NDRC/NDA price-formation notice (发改价格〔2025〕65号). The 20-article rule prices the 'public-data operation service fee' (公共数据运营服务费) with a regulated-utility toolkit: government-guided pricing, a maximum permitted revenue equal to operating cost + permitted profit + tax, and a permitted profit rate capped at the prior-year 10-year treasury yield plus no more than 6 percentage points. DCC reads the full text (carried by 数据行者X) against the Guangdong DRC's official interpretation (carried by 砖济咨询) to draw out what overseas counsel needs: this is cost-of-service, rate-of-return regulation imported into the data-element market, with periodic resets every three years, a ±10% annual adjustment band, mandatory cost separation, and a carve-out keeping public-governance and public-welfare data 'conditionally free.'
- § 07 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Data 'Parallel Property Rights' — They Can Confer Status, but Can't Secure Control
Part four — and the synthesis — of Hong Yanqing's (洪延青, 网安寻路人) study notes on China's 'separation of three rights' data-property framework takes up 'parallel property rights' (数据平行财产权): how to allocate rights when the *same* data is held, used, and operated by *multiple* parties at once. Building on Xiong Bingwan and Zhuang Hongshan's 'one-data, multiple-rights' (一数数权) idea — data is non-rivalrous and copyable, so the same right over the same data can sit with several parties without excluding each other — Hong argues parallel property rights are best understood as *default rules* for incomplete-contract, collaborative-production settings: internally, parallel use is presumed; externally, operation is classified by data type (by-products each party may operate alone; purpose-built or fused data needs the others' consent); and parallel holders share a *joint defensive* interest against third parties. But the substance, he shows, falls back on derivative data — and here Xiong, Xu Ke (许可), and Shen Weixing (申卫星), despite different scenarios and tests, all tilt the derivative-data right to the *processor*, leaving the data contributor with contract/compensation/tort/PI remedies rather than ownership of the new product. DCC's read for overseas counsel: parallel property rights cut *attribution* uncertainty (who may use, operate, defend) but not *control* uncertainty (future use, detection, tracing, modelled value, third-party chains, ongoing compliance) — status, not control.
- § 08 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Why Upstream Won't Operate Its Data — Control Degradation, Derivative Data, and Irreducible Uncertainty
Part three of Hong Yanqing's (洪延青, 网安寻路人) study notes on China's 'separation of three rights' framework turns to the Right to Operate Data (数据经营权) — the right to provide data externally by transfer, licence, capital contribution, or pledge — and asks a question prior to 'what does operation transfer?': in real conditions, *will* an upstream party operate its data at all? His answer: yes, but narrowly. Control-dependent upstreams (platforms, holders of core user or irreplaceable industrial/training data) tend not to provide open, raw, autonomous access, and shift to controlled use or simply decline. The reason is structural. Once a downstream party is licensed to use data, the derivative data it produces is a *new object*: the upstream's *erga omnes* (对世) control over the raw data does not reach it, leaving the upstream — at most — a contractual claim against one counterparty. Hong then catalogues the uncertainties an upstream faces *ex ante*: some that attribution rules could touch but can't eliminate (qualification of the output, default ownership, good-faith of the processor, measurement of remedy), and some no rule can reach (combinatorial/unforeseeable value, undetectable misuse, the privity-and-insolvency chain, fusion and co-ownership, abstraction leakage into model parameters and learned skills, personal-information exposure, and counterparty hold-up). DCC's read for overseas counsel: this is the rigorous explanation of why Chinese data 'supply' is thin and why sandbox / privacy-computing structures dominate — defining a right does not supply the conditions to exercise it.
- § 09 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
When the 'Right to Use Data' Goes External — Provision, Derivative Data, and the Erosion of Upstream Control
Part two of Hong Yanqing's (洪延青, 网安寻路人) study notes on China's 'separation of three rights' data-property framework turns to the Right to Use Data (数据使用权). The official definition (国家数据局, Common Data Terms Batch 2) makes the use right an *internal* power — 'I use my own data' to process, aggregate, analyse, and form derivative data — exercised on the premise of *not* providing data externally. So 'granting a use right to a downstream party' is not the use right travelling outward; it is the upstream party exercising its **operation right** to license, while the downstream party acquires a use right. That externalisation flips the downstream's legal position from PIPL **entrusted processor** (委托处理) to **provision** (提供) or **joint processing** — triggering notice and *separate consent* for personal information, and the Network Data Security Regulation's contracting duties. And because a strong use right lets the downstream form **derivative data** (衍生数据) — models, scores, indices, labels — value migrates downstream even though the raw data stays upstream. DCC's read for overseas counsel: in China data deals the use right is real but never self-bounding; whether a partner will grant an open, autonomous use right depends on its business model (control-dependent vs monetisation), and the default structure you should expect is *controlled use* (sandbox, privacy computing, federated modelling), not a clean copy.
- § 10 · DATA-ECONOMY
China Halts Data-Asset ABS: Exchanges Pull the Handbrake on a ¥200 Billion Pipeline
According to reporting by Caixin (财新) and 财联社 circulated on 3–5 June 2026, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges issued window guidance bringing the entire data-asset ABS (数据资产ABS) business chain to a stop — new filings turned away, approved-but-unissued deals told to pause, even issuance-approved deals told to delay. This halts a category that exploded from roughly 11 issuances raising ~¥4.6bn in 2025 to 21 issuances and ¥15.4bn in the first five months of 2026, with a declared pipeline approaching ¥200bn. The stated trigger is mission drift: pure-data-asset deals are under 2% of the market, while local-government financing vehicles (城投/LGFV) used the loose, fast 'data-asset' label to repackage existing non-standard debt as standardised bonds — data as window-dressing, with no real data cash flow behind it. DCC reads the event, the structural reasons, the three審查 gates the exchanges are expected to harden, and what it means for anyone underwriting, rating, or investing in China data-asset financing.
- § 11 · DATA-ECONOMY
What a 'Data-Asset ABS' Actually Securitises — The Collateral Is Data, the Cash Flow Is Not
The name misleads. A Chinese 'data-asset ABS' (数据资产证券化) is labelled as such when data-pledged collateral exceeds 50% of the asset pool — but the underlying assets that actually generate the repayment cash flow are conventional financial claims: supply-chain receivables, trust-loan beneficiary rights, or finance-lease claims. Data is the collateral, the credit-enhancement, or the pricing-and-monitoring tool — not the cash-flow source. This brief, the second in DCC's data-asset-ABS series, unpacks the mechanism overseas counsel need to price the risk: the four live deal structures (trust-loan, receivables, finance-lease, data-empowerment); the difference between accounting recognition (入表) and legal right-confirmation (确权); and the four legal infirmities that make these deals fragile — unsettled data property rights, the true-sale problem created by data's non-exclusivity, the limits of bankruptcy isolation when asset value depends on the originator's continued operation, and the PIPL/DSL eligibility gates. It reads the flagship deals (平安-如皋, 华鑫-鑫欣, 青岛, 杭州高新金投) for what each actually did.
- § 12 · DATA-ECONOMY
From Collateral to Cash Flow: The 'Secondary Licensing' Model That Would Make Data-Asset ABS Real
If today's data-asset ABS is '1.0' — data as collateral behind a conventional debt claim — then '2.0' is the version where the data's own cash flow (licensing fees, data-service subscriptions) directly repays the securities, upgrading data from credit-enhancement tool to genuine underlying asset. This third brief in DCC's data-asset-ABS series examines the structure most likely to get there: the 'secondary licensing' (二次许可) model borrowed from intellectual-property ABS, in which a holder exclusively licenses data to an originator for an upfront lump sum, then takes a reverse exclusive licence back and pays periodic fees that become the ABS cash flow — ownership never moving. It maps the obstacles (data's non-exclusivity defeats 'exclusive licence' and 'exclusive possession'; PIPL/DSL cap what can be licensed; valuation is immature), the finance-lease-of-data variant, and the early policy encouragement (Anhui's March 2026 measures endorsing reverse-licensing). The irony the June 2026 halt exposed: regulators want real data cash flow — which is exactly what 2.0 promises but cannot yet deliver at scale.
- § 13 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Two Paths for the 'Right to Hold Data' — and Why the Narrow One May Add Little
Hong Yanqing (洪延青, 网安寻路人) works through the most unstable concept in China's 'separation of three rights' data-property framework — the Right to Hold Data (数据持有权). He pushes two readings to their logical ends. Path 1, the official 'complete separation' (三权完全切割): if the rights to hold, use, and operate data are truly independent, the holding right shrinks to a bare 'lawful-control state' whose only content is defensive — and that defense is already provided, against the world, by PIPL Article 10, DSL Article 32, the Network Data Security Regulation, and Article 13 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, so its incremental value as a standalone property right is thin. Path 2, the 'mother-right' reconstruction (持有权母权化): redefine 'holding' from factual control to a normative control that contains utilization potential, so the rights to use and operate are carved out from within it. DCC's read for overseas counsel: in Chinese data deals the tradeable substance sits in the rights to use and operate plus contract, registration, and compliance — not in 'who holds the data' — and China's data-property theory is still genuinely unsettled.
- § 14 · DATA-PLEDGE-FINANCING
Data Pledge Financing in China: What Is Actually Being Pledged, and Where the Law Gets Stuck
As Chinese banks and data exchanges experiment with data pledge financing (数据质押融资), a threshold question remains unresolved: what, legally, is being pledged? Chen Yiqian of Shenzhen Data Exchange walks through the two available routes under the Civil Code — chattel pledge (动产质权) and rights pledge (权利质权) — and the three operational problems that make chattel pledge difficult and the two doctrinal barriers that make rights pledge harder still. The analysis converges on a practical conclusion: chattel pledge via a third-party data custodian is the most workable path today, while data property rights and data intellectual-property rights both remain insufficiently legalised to support a reliable pledge. For overseas counsel advising on China data-asset financing, the gap between policy ambition and legal infrastructure is the central risk to price. Connects to the broader data property-rights registration project and the unresolved question of how data enters corporate balance sheets.
- § 15 · JUDICIAL
Datatang v. Yinmu — China's First Ruling on a Data-IP Registration Certificate, and Why Open-Sourced Data Is Still Protected
A consolidated case study of 数据堂诉隐木科技 (Datatang v. Yinmu) — the Beijing IP Court's June 2024 appeal ruling, widely called China's first case on the evidentiary effect of a data-IP registration certificate. The dispute: Datatang built voice datasets for AI training, open-sourced some under a license; Yinmu took and redistributed them in the same data-services market. DCC synthesizes four commentaries (the case report, a Tsinghua analysis, and two Shenzhen Data Exchange DEXC+ deep-dives) into the four holdings that matter for overseas counsel: (1) a data-IP registration certificate is prima facie evidence of property-type interests and lawful sourcing — but not an absolute property right (property-rights-statutism); (2) open-sourced data, though neither trade secret nor copyrightable compilation, is protectable under the Anti-Unfair Competition Law's general clause; (3) the protection hierarchy (compilation work → trade secret → AUCL Art. 2); and (4) whether the taker honored the open-source license is the hinge for 'improper conduct.'
- § 16 · ANONYMIZATION
Reviving a Zombie Provision — Xu Ke's Concentric-Circle Reconstruction of the Anonymization Regime
Xu Ke (UIBE) calls PIPL Article 4's anonymization carve-out a 'zombie provision' (僵尸法条) — on the books, never used, and one of the biggest blockages in the data-element market. His diagnosis: the zombie state is caused not by the text but by three unaddressed worries (processors fear the standard is unattainable or value-destroying; regulators fear anonymization becomes an evasion tool; users fear it's a hollow promise). His cure is a concentric-circle architecture that maps three risk types (systemic / operational / residual) onto three layers of anonymity (presumptive / determined / trust). This is the most complete academic blueprint yet for making the anonymization clause operational — and it pairs directly with TRIMPS's risk-based, recipient-relative reading.
- § 17 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
The 'Rights Block' — Xu Ke's Structural Theory Behind China's Data-Property Framework
Xu Ke's highly-cited (255×) 政法论坛 article on the structure of data rights — the theoretical scaffolding that the Data 20 Articles' three-rights framework rests on. He maps the field's two warring paradigms (formalist 'empowerment' vs substantivist 'conduct regulation'), argues both fail alone, and integrates them via a 'reflexive law' approach. The payoff is a taxonomy of three possible rights structures — rights-ball, rights-bundle, rights-block — and the case that the 'data rights block' (数据权利块) best fits data's 'one principle, many manifestations' character. For overseas counsel, this is the conceptual map that explains why Chinese data rights are structured the way they are — and why Western property and IP analogies keep failing.
- § 18 · DATA-ASSET
When Does Data Become an Asset? Xu Ke on Identifying and Defining Data Assets
Xu Ke (UIBE), writing for a practitioner audience, draws the line between data resource (国家视角, public/strategic) and data asset (市场主体视角, commercial), then between the broad sense (anything that creates value for the enterprise) and the narrow sense (meets the MOF accounting-standard test for on-balance-sheet recognition — owned/controlled, generates economic benefit, reliably measurable). He works the three-rights framework into operational boundaries by data type (personal / enterprise / government) and flags the practical questions overseas counsel face when a Chinese counterparty wants to put data on its balance sheet.
- § 19 · DATA-ECONOMY
Tang Linyao — Data-Broker Derivative Harms and the 'Data Integration Analysis Framework'
Tang Linyao (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) maps the regulatory gap for data-broker derivative harms — the harms that arise not from direct PI leakage but from the integration and aggregation activity that data brokers themselves perform. The analytical core: a vertical / horizontal data-relations framework that explains why existing PIPL-style protection (vertical-relationship-focused) systematically fails to address horizontal-relationship harms; and the 'abstract risk substantialization' doctrine borrowed from US precedent and EU GDPR to bring data-broker risk into ex-ante regulatory scope. Operationally, Tang proposes a 'Data Integration Analysis Framework' with concrete tiering (三高 / 双高 / 单高 / 三低) that translates academic doctrine into compliance-program-grade controls. Applied to a real Shenzhen Data Exchange listing as worked example.
- § 20 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Wang Nian — Data Source's Rights as a 'Fair Use' Right Alongside the Three Rights
Wang Nian (Tsinghua Law) takes on the unresolved fourth-right question in the Data 20 Articles framework: what is the data source's right (数据来源者权), and how does it relate to the three rights (hold/use/operate)? Drawing on the 'data symbiosis' (数据共生) framework from the ALI-ELI Data Economy Principles and the EU Data Act, Wang argues that pre-existing legal entitlements — privacy, PI rights, IP, trade secrets — cover only part of the source's interest, leaving a residual that needs an independent legal protection. He frames the data-source right as a 'fair use right' (公平使用权): a contractual-relationship right against the specific data processor, distinct from the property-style three rights, that captures the value contribution of the source's participation in data co-creation. The corporate-data-portability analog DCC flagged in our NDA brief gets its doctrinal foundation here.
- § 21 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
NDA Explains the Three-Rights Framework — A Plain-Language Walk-Through from the Regulator Itself
The National Data Administration's official 政策解读 (policy interpretation) on the three-rights framework — the right to hold, the right to use, and the right to operate data — established by the Data 20 Articles. NDA walks through what each right means, illustrative scenarios (group-company data subsidiaries; hospital-pharma research pools; data-broker commission arrangements), how the rights relate to each other (independently severable; non-exclusive across parties for the same data), and why the structural-separation design was chosen over a unitary-ownership model. The clearest available statement of the regulator's own intent on the framework that anchors every downstream rule — data-resource registration, data-property-rights registration, FTZ data-circulation negative lists, on-floor / over-the-counter trading rules.
- § 22 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Who Is the 'Data Processor' Under the Three-Rights Framework — NDA's Farm-Equipment Hypothetical
NDA's official 政策解读 on the threshold question that every three-rights allocation depends on: who is the 'data processor' and who is the 'information subject'? NDA uses a farm-equipment hypothetical — a farm rents tractor, irrigation, and fertilizer equipment from three different vendors; cultivation data is captured in the process — to work through who collects, who decides processing purposes, and how the property-rights regime balances the data-processor's commercial interest against the information-subject's rights to access copies of relevant data. The piece sketches the basic information-subject vs. data-processor dichotomy that anchors the entire downstream data-element regime, and surfaces the access-to-data right (data portability for commercial entities) that overseas counsel often miss.
- § 23 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Cloud, BPO, and Other Entrusted-Processing Arrangements: Why the Processor Doesn't Get the Rights
NDA's official 政策解读 on a tactically critical sub-question of the three-rights framework: when a data processor outsources storage, processing, or analysis to a third-party service provider — typical cloud, BPO, or e-government-system arrangements — does the entrusted party acquire any of the three property rights? NDA's clear answer: no. The entrusted processor (受托人) is not a 'data processor' in the property-rights sense — it merely executes instructions on behalf of the data processor (the principal). It cannot use the data outside the entrusted scope, cannot transfer the data into market circulation, and cannot apply the data to its own debt repayment or bankruptcy distribution. The line is anchored to the Civil Code's contract-of-mandate rules — a long-standing piece of Chinese commercial law extended cleanly into the data-element regime.
- § 24 · PUBLIC-DATA
Public Data Under Franchise and Concession Operations: Who Owns It and Can It Be Traded?
Infrastructure and public-utility operators in China — gas networks, urban parking, water systems, and similar franchise/concession (特许经营) businesses — generate data that falls within the statutory definition of 'public data.' That classification creates compliance questions that standard enterprise-data analysis does not answer: does a franchise agreement confer the right to process and sell that data, and under what conditions? Two Shenzhen Data Exchange compliance officers work through the asset-ownership and revenue-attribution routes for establishing data-use authority, flag the asset-transfer risk that attaches to API and dataset licensing, and explain why franchise-generated public data should not be silently assimilated into the authorised-operation (授权运营) model now being piloted across Chinese cities. The operational takeaway: amend legacy concession agreements to address data rights explicitly, and build the data-rights clause into every new franchise contract before signing.
- § 25 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Inside the Reviewer's Mind — A Compliance Guide to Data Property-Rights Registration at Shenzhen Data Exchange
China's data property-rights registration (数据产权登记) regime has no single national rulebook yet, which makes the reviewer's checklist at the registrar level the operational baseline for any applicant. This brief summarises a practitioner guide by two compliance managers at Shenzhen Data Exchange (深圳数据交易所), explaining what registration reviewers actually scrutinise: whether the subject-matter falls within the platform's accepted scope; whether the applicant can substantiate entitlement to one or more of the three data-property rights (持有权 / 使用权 / 经营权); and whether the submitted materials are internally consistent and complete. The guide also clarifies common misconceptions about the 'three rights' structure — including why 'data ownership' is not a legally recognised concept and why holding-right does not automatically confer use-right or operating-right. For overseas counsel advising clients on data-asset registration, this is the clearest available account of how the first-mover registrar reads applications.
- § 26 · PUBLIC-DATA
Authorized to Operate, Not Authorized to Ignore: Public-Data Operators Still Owe the Full PIPL/DSL Stack
China's public-data authorized-operation regime — established by the January 2025 Implementation Specifications and its companion instruments — does not exempt operators from the personal information and data-security duties that sit underneath it. This brief, drawn from the Shenzhen Data Exchange's DEXC+ compliance column, sets out six specific areas where authorized operators routinely fall short: failure to classify data before operating it, misreading the operator's role in multi-party processing chains, skipping notification obligations, misidentifying the lawful basis for processing, misapplying consent that was gathered for a different purpose, and omitting the separate impact-assessment and annual risk-evaluation obligations under PIPL and the Network Data Security Regulations. The operational takeaway for overseas counsel advising operators or investors: government authorization is the entry ticket to the public-data market, not a waiver of the compliance checklist that governs what happens once inside.
- § 27 · PUBLIC-DATA
Inside the Gate: How Enterprises Can Compliantly Process, Operate, and Trade Public Data Under China's Authorized-Operation Model
China's public-data authorized-operation regime (公共数据授权运营) is the primary route for enterprises to commercialise government-held data. A DEXC+ analysis by Yang Haoran maps the full compliance arc: what qualifies as public data, how it must be processed within a sandboxed platform, and what a data product needs to clear before it can be listed on an exchange. Drawing on the National Data Administration's draft Authorized-Operation Implementation Specifications and Shenzhen Data Exchange's own 3×4 dynamic-compliance framework — covering subject compliance, subject-matter compliance, and circulation compliance across legal, security, integrity, and rights dimensions — the brief gives overseas counsel a structured view of the obligations that attach at each stage of the public-data supply chain, from first authorisation to on-exchange listing.
- § 28 · DATA-TRADING
Mapping the Red Lines: Compliance Assessment for Surveying and Geographic-Information Data Products on a Chinese Data Exchange
When Sichuan province's first surveying and geographic-information (测绘地理信息) data product was listed on the Shenzhen Data Exchange (深圳数据交易所), the compliance team from Si Chuan Rui Li Heng Law Firm worked through a seven-point assessment framework that goes well beyond general data-trading rules. This brief walks overseas counsel through that framework: why the surveying-and-mapping regime (测绘法 and subordinate rules) adds a specialist qualification layer on top of the Network Data Security Management Regulations; how the classified-surveying-results (涉密测绘成果) screen works in practice; what 'important geographic-information data' (重要地理信息数据) means for tradability; and why data origin — self-collected versus purchased versus project-derived — changes the due-diligence checklist materially. The operational takeaway: for this sector, general data-exchange compliance is necessary but not sufficient.
- § 29 · PIA
The PIA as a Trading-Compliance Line — What the Network Data Security Management Regulations Add for Personal-Information Data Products
China's personal-information protection impact assessment (PIA / 个人信息保护影响评估) has long been a statutory requirement under PIPL, but uptake in data-trading contexts remains low. A DEXC+ analysis by Wang Senpeng of Shenzhen Data Exchange argues that the Network Data Security Management Regulations (网络数据安全管理条例, 'Network Data Regs') significantly refine when and how a PIA must be conducted before a personal-information data product changes hands. The brief maps three trigger layers — subject compliance, subject-matter compliance, and circulation compliance — and then draws out the evaluation dimensions the Regulations add: a new 'dual-list' privacy-policy requirement, data-processing-agreement minimum contents, a three-year record-keeping obligation, and tightened rules on web-scraping and de-identification. For overseas counsel: a PIA is no longer just a cross-border formality — it is the primary compliance gate for trading sensitive data, delegated-processing arrangements, and any automated-decision-making data product.
- § 30 · DERIVATIVE-DATA
Derivative Data Products and Public Data Opening — Legal Challenges and Compliance Points
As China opens public-sector datasets for commercial exploitation, companies building derivative data products (衍生数据产品) face a layered compliance problem: the definition of 'derivative data' in the National Data Administration's 2025 glossary is deliberately high-threshold (substantial transformation, significant value uplift); provincial rules on automated collection, source-labelling, and sensitive-data assessment are inconsistent; and a three-way collision between the open-data rules, third-party platform terms, and the 2025 Anti-Unfair Competition Law amendments has no clean resolution. Wang Yi and Yu Hao (both DEXCO-certified partners at Global Law Office Shenzhen) map the definitional landscape, five categories of operational red lines, and four protective strategies — including the new data-specific provision in the revised Anti-Unfair Competition Law — for practitioners building or advising on derivative-data businesses.
- § 31 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
From Copyright to Data Property: The Three-Layer Compliance Test for Registering Employee-Created Data in China
China's data property-rights registration regime treats copyright and data property (数据产权) as separate legal categories — a distinction that catches many applicants off guard when employee-created works are involved. This brief summarises a practitioner analysis by two Shenzhen Data Exchange compliance officers, who explain the three-layer 'penetrating review' (穿透审核) logic that registrars actually apply: lawful acquisition (合法获取), factual control (事实持有), and defined scope of use (使用范围). For overseas counsel advising clients that hold data generated by employees — including code, engineering drawings, maps, and other special categories of work-made-for-hire under China's Copyright Law — the key operational takeaway is that a copyright certificate alone is insufficient. Registration of all three data property rights (holding right, use right, operating right) requires distinct evidence chains for each, and the employment contract is the starting document, not the copyright certificate.
- § 32 · TOKENS
Cold Water on 'Token Trading' — Wang Qinglan on the NDA's High-Quality Data Set Initiative
In March 2026, the National Data Administration released the *Implementation Plan for Promoting High-Quality Industry Data Set Construction (Draft for Public Consultation)*, which explores a 'token (词元) based value system' and 'token trading as a new transaction mode' for high-quality data sets. The Chinese AI policy community immediately heralded the move as 'revolutionizing data trading.' Wang Qinglan pours cold water: token is a measuring unit, not a magic transformer. AI tokens are not crypto tokens. The bottleneck in China's data-element market isn't measurement — it's supply, rights clarity, compliance cost, and data silos.
- § 33 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
Will Judicial Review 'Reset' the Data Registration Rush? — Reading Wang Qinglan on the SPC's New Data Disputes Case Category
Wang Qinglan, head of compliance at a Chinese data exchange, asks what the Supreme People's Court's new 'data disputes' case category — effective January 1, 2026 — does to the data property rights registration certificates that institutions across the country have been issuing. Her argument: certificates issued through formal-only review will not survive substantive judicial scrutiny, and a single rejected certificate could erode trust in the entire registration regime. The path forward is a three-tiered protection model and aligned standards across regulators, registration institutions, and courts.
- § 34 · AI-GOVERNANCE
Reverse Interoperability: Li Wenlong's Frame for the Doubao On-Device Agent Fight
ByteDance's Doubao phone assistant — preinstalled at the device layer to operate other apps on a user's behalf — was met with pop-up blocks from WeChat and others citing security and risk-control. Li Wenlong (科技利维坦) argues the dispute is, at bottom, a question of how China's competition-law toolkit (反不正当竞争法 / 反垄断法) absorbs the idea of interoperability — and specifically what he calls 'reverse interoperability (反向互操作性)'. The classic interoperability problem is a platform refusing to open up, with antitrust used as a market remedy to force access. Doubao inverts it: interoperability is fully achieved at the device level, and the legal question becomes whether the law should restrict 'over-interoperation.' Li maps interoperability's journey from the Microsoft case through GDPR data portability and the DMA to the agent era, distinguishes the Doubao fight from the decade-old 3Q War, and predicts on-device-agent governance will look less like classic antitrust and more like the ex-ante, conditional-use compliance model emerging for AI training data. For overseas counsel: a structural read on the platform-access war that on-device AI agents are about to intensify.
- § 35 · CROSS-BORDER
Mutual Trust Mechanisms for Cross-Border Data Flow — China's 'Trusted Data Space' Bet
Compliance Talker's global legal policy team analyzes three competing models for cross-border data mutual trust: the EU's 'rule trust' (adequacy + SCC), the US's 'market trust' (CLOUD Act + DPF), and China's 'technology trust' bet on Trusted Data Spaces (TDS). The NDA's November 2024 *TDS Development Action Plan 2024-2028* makes confidential computing, federated learning, and blockchain the technical layer through which China seeks to demonstrate cross-border data flow can be 'usable but invisible.' For overseas teams, this is the most concrete view of where Chinese cross-border data infrastructure is heading.
- § 36 · DATA-FUNDAMENTALS
What Is Data, Really? — A Plain-Language Primer on Rules and Compliance
What does it actually mean to call something 'data,' and what turns raw recordings into a data asset? Wang Qinglan uses a toy storage room metaphor to walk through the foundational concept overseas readers often skip: data is not just 'records' — it's records made under rules. Master data, metadata, ontology, the three-tier compliance taxonomy (legal / ethical / promised), and the three-step compliance workflow (select / allocate / execute) — all anchored in a concrete example a non-specialist can follow.
- § 37 · DATA-GOVERNANCE
Data Governance vs. Data Management vs. Data Compliance — A Plain-Language Disambiguation
Wang Qinglan disambiguates three terms that compliance and data teams habitually conflate: data governance, data management, and data compliance. Using a 'data manor' metaphor (the family council vs. the steward team vs. the community monitor), she maps each function to its job — setting direction, executing efficiently, and operating sustainably within external rules and self-imposed commitments. The piece is useful precisely where bilingual confusion is highest: 'data governance' in English carries different connotations than 数据治理 in Chinese practice.
- § 38 · DATA-PROPERTY-RIGHTS
What Does Data Registration Actually Confirm? — A Doctrinal Reading
Long before the SPC's January 2026 'data disputes' case category started squeezing data registration certificates against judicial review, Wang Qinglan had already written the foundational critique: data registration does not 'confirm rights' because there are no legal data rights to confirm. The Data 20 Articles created data property rights, not data legal rights, and Chinese property rights are not Article-conferred civil rights. Registration certificates are 'trust credentials,' not 'rights certificates.' This is the doctrinal essay overseas counsel should read before the SPC sequel.
- § 39 · DATA-EXCHANGES
On-Exchange vs. Off-Exchange Data Trading — A Uniquely Chinese Market Structure
Why does China have data exchanges? Wang Qinglan's piece opens with an observation overseas readers will recognize: 'When you tell foreigners about China's on-exchange data trading market, you get blank stares — because exchange-organized data trading is uniquely Chinese.' The analogy she offers — Shenzhen Data Exchange is to data what the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is to securities — unlocks the architecture. Five tiers of trading venues by public-risk level. Three waves of Chinese data-exchange evolution. And the operational meaning of why on-exchange and off-exchange trading coexist.
- § 40 · DATA-ECONOMY
What Is Actually Traded on China's Data Exchanges — A Bakery Metaphor
Per the Shenzhen Provisional Measures for Data Trading Administration, four categories of object can be traded on a Chinese data exchange: data products, data services, data tools, and other regulator-approved objects. Wang Qinglan walks through what each means in plain language with a bakery metaphor — wheat (raw data) becomes flour (data resources) becomes cakes (data products); a baker is a data service; the oven is a data tool. The piece is useful precisely because it answers a question overseas teams rarely think to ask: what are the data exchanges actually selling?
- § 41 · PUBLIC-DATA
Case Study — A Public-Data Operator Hands Personal Data to a Bank. Two Compliance Failures.
A real-case analysis from Wang Qinglan. A state-affiliated auction company holds the public-data operating right for vehicle license-plate auction data. A bank persuades it to hand over the personal data of winning bidders. The bank builds a targeted credit product and pays the auction company RMB 12 million a year in revenue share. Two compliance failures: (1) no individual consent under PIPL; (2) no credit reference business license under the Credit Reference Industry Regulation and Credit Reference Business Measures. Public-data authorized operation does not displace the credit reference licensing regime.