Filed under data-classification
Every brief tagged "data-classification".
- § 01 · IMPORTANT-DATA
Are You Caught by the Annual Assessment? TRIMPS's Self-Identification Guide for 'Important-Data Handlers'
With the Network Data Security Risk Assessment Measures (Order No. 24) taking effect August 20, 2026, the annual risk-assessment duty stops being a principle and becomes a hard calendar event — but only for 'important-data handlers' (重要数据处理者). DCC's summary of a self-identification guide from the Data Security R&D Center of the Ministry of Public Security's Third Research Institute (公安部三所 / TRIMPS), author Lü Mingxuan, walks the threshold test the institution that helps draft the standards wants processors to run before the clock starts. There are three independent gates, any one of which puts you in: (1) you process data meeting the 'important data' definition under Article 62 of the Network Data Security Management Regulation; (2) the deeming rule — you process the personal information of more than 10 million people, which pulls you into the important-data duties of Regulation Arts. 30 and 32 regardless of whether you hold any 'important data'; or (3) your data sits on a regional, departmental, or sectoral important-data catalogue. Entrusted processors inherit the duty from an important-data-handler client; CIIO status and important-data-handler status are separate, intersecting tests; and identifying important data runs through GB/T 43697-2024 Appendix G's 18 factors plus the applicable catalogues. The guide then lays out the operating requirements once you are in: annual mandatory assessment plus trigger-based instant assessments, a stacked PIPIA for the 10-million-PI cohort, three-year report retention, and submission within 20 working days. DCC's read for overseas counsel: classification is the gate, the 10-million-PI deeming rule is the trap for consumer businesses with no 'important data' at all, and the self-ID needs to happen now.
- § 02 · HEALTH-DATA
China's Hospitals Get Their Own Data Rulebook: Reading the 2026 Healthcare Data Security & PI Measures
On 12 February 2026 five agencies — the National Health Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration — jointly issued the Measures for the Administration of Data Security and Personal Information Protection of Healthcare Institutions (Trial). It is the first operational, sector-specific rulebook that turns the Data Security Law, PIPL, and the Network Data Security Regulation into concrete hospital obligations: a three-tier core/important/general data classification keyed to MLPS levels and commercial cryptography; a five-pillar full-lifecycle security system; a ten-item data prohibition list and an eight-item personal-information prohibition list; heightened protection for special groups; limits on facial recognition and AI; and a real enforcement chain running from named-person accountability through regulatory interviews, administrative penalties, civil tort liability, and criminal referral. DCC reads it for overseas pharma, medtech, and hospital-JV counsel — with the cross-border choke point and its academic-cooperation carve-out as the parts that most affect global clinical-data flows.
- § 03 · CRITICAL-INFORMATION-INFRASTRUCTURE
Are You a CII Operator or an Important-Data Handler? A Practitioner's Assessment Framework Under China's New Rules
China's Cybersecurity Law, Data Security Law, and Network Data Security Management Regulations impose materially heavier compliance obligations on critical information infrastructure (CII) operators (关键信息基础设施运营者) and important-data handlers (重要数据处理者) than on ordinary data processors. This brief, drawing on a DEXC+ practitioner analysis by Gu Qingzhuo (古青卓) of the Shenzhen Data Exchange compliance team, explains how the two statuses are determined under the current framework, why neither is self-evident from a company's own assessment alone, how recent rules — including the Regulations on Promoting and Regulating Cross-Border Data Flows and the national standard GB/T 43697-2024 — have clarified but not fully resolved the important-data identification problem, and what overseas counsel should do when advising clients that operate in China's critical sectors.
- § 04 · 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.
- § 05 · 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.
- § 06 · 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.