China passes tough new online privacy law

No problem. As I see it, China's government already controls the Internet in that country, just like Russia. It's just another Great Wall and another way to bleed profits from Chinese businesses. But, the populace, in general, doesn't care.

Kettle telling the pot it can't be black?

"Picking flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China."

. . . PLA Daily

China passed a sweeping privacy law aimed at preventing businesses from collecting sensitive personal data Friday, as the country faces an uptick in internet scams, leaks and concerns about tech giants abusing clients' personal information.

Clearly the CCCP doesn't like competition in this area.

CCP never has good intentions. They are just upset they are not the only ones spying and manipulating their society.

I support these good laws.

Hope it will rein in the chinese companies who exploit workers.

CCP doesnt like competition.

You can’t gather, steal, and control people’s personal data!

That’s our job.

I think you're closer to the truth than you might imagine. The Chinese are worried about how much personal data regarding the living situations, buying habits including porn and prostitution habits, bank accouts including overseas accounts, who communicates with who and the like are held by the many companies in China that handle the routine business and internet transactions of CCP party members. Information like this is a gold mine for foreign intelligence to use to build profiles of important party members or to maybe blackmail them or otherwise recruit them as spies. Remember China's Minister of State Security defected to the US last February while on a visit to California to see his daughter who is going to a university there. The CCP and Xi Jinping are probably freaking out that someone who knows so much about them is now talking to the US telling them who does what where and how, and the documentation of their deeds, or misdeeds against party orthodoxy are all there in those internet data bases the CCP wants to protect.

Privacy is one of the weapons that will be used by governments to wreck the global internet and build borders online.

Bizarrely, in the land of the free, there are US provincial news sites that block European citizens from reading local news stories 'because of GDPR'.

We will all see more blank screens in the future. Then governments will ban the VPNs that allow us to get around them.

As for Western companies operating in China, this law is the first, polite warning: You are unwelcome. Leave. Later warnings will be less polite. Cut your losses and get out whilst you can. That includes Hong Kong.

"China's new privacy regime is one of the toughest in the world," said Kendra Schaefer, a partner at Beijing-based consulting firm Trivium China. "China is not really looking at the short term with this law." Instead, she said, it aims "to establish the foundations for the digital economy over the next 40 or 50 years."

Just making sure she gets to stay in China and has her visa renewed next time around.