China Approach to Data Protection Practices in Context of Artificial Intelligence

This chapter examines how China navigates data protection in the context of artificial intelligence (AI), seeking to balance AI development and safety in practice. China’s reluctance to introduce AI-specific statutes or a comprehensive AI law led data protection law to playing a prominent and practical role in regulating AI where personal data processing is involved. When drafting the comprehensive Personal Information Protection Law, Chinese legislators consistently took AI into account, aiming to establish both boundaries and opportunities for AI development. Overall, China has adopted a relatively stringent approach to addressing harms arising from personal data processing when AI services are supplied to the public, while maintaining a more lenient stance toward regulating AI model training. This chapter is structured in four parts. Section 7.1 outlines China’s emerging AI governance framework. Section 7.2 examines the general interplay between AI regulation and data protection. Section 7.3 analyses the stringent protective approach to data protection enforcement in three categories of AI applications that have attracted disproportionate attention from judicial and administrative authorities: automated decision-making AI, facial recognition AI, and deep synthesis AI. Section 7.4 discusses the lawful ground for publicly available personal data processing that facilitate AI development, along with related practices.