Every brief.
The full run, most recent first.
- § 61 · 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.
- § 62 · IMPORTANT-DATA
'Important Data' Is a Category, Not a Tier
Hong Yanqing argues the mainstream reading of Article 21 of the Data Security Law confuses enterprise asset-inventory language with state-level legal-interest protection — with real consequences for cross-border transfers, enforcement, and how PIPL and DSL stack.
- § 63 · FOREIGN-INVESTMENT-SECURITY-REVIEW
Why China Used Foreign Investment Security Review on Manus — Not Tech or Data Export
Hong Yanqing on Beijing's banning of Meta's Manus acquisition. The regulator's choice of pathway — Foreign Investment Security Review, not Technology or Data Export — signals a shift from 'transaction-level' to 'capability-level' oversight of frontier AI projects, with implications for any overseas tech investment touching China.
- § 64 · 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.
- § 65 · CRIMINAL-LIABILITY
When PIPL Violation Becomes a Crime — Hong Yanqing on China's Personal Information Criminal Threshold
Hong Yanqing on the criminal-side analog to PIPL — when does mishandling personal information cross from administrative violation into the crime of 'infringing on citizens' personal information'? His critique: the two key elements ('relevant State provisions' and 'serious circumstances') are too loose, and courts have stretched them in ways that should worry compliance teams.
- § 66 · FACIAL-RECOGNITION
When Is Facial Recognition in a Public Place 'Necessary for Public Security'? Hong Yanqing's Four-Element Framework
Hong Yanqing on how to operationalize PIPL Article 26's 'necessary for public security' principle for public-place video surveillance and facial recognition. His framework: a four-step necessity test, tiered risk regime with a published prohibited list, three-fold technical controls, and a lifecycle closure mechanism — drawing on EU AI Act and US state-level practice.