[The Epoch Times, December 23, 2022]The State Council of the Communist Party of China announced on December 19 the “Opinions on Building a Basic Data System and Making Better Use of Data Elements”, proposing the so-called “20” policy measures, including “establishing Data property rights system, establishment of data element circulation and transaction system, establishment of data element income distribution system that promotes fairness, establishment of safe, controllable, flexible and inclusive data element governance system, etc. According to the CCP’s document, the establishment of a data infrastructure “is related to the overall situation of national development and security.” The purpose of their 20 articles is to take advantage of China’s “massive data scale” and “rich application scenarios”, “activate the potential of data elements, make the digital economy stronger, better and bigger, enhance the new momentum of economic development and build new advantages in national competition “. In other words, the CCP has identified the digital economy as a new breakthrough in China’s economic development, which will bring new advantages to the CCP government in international competition.
As we all know, the most critical factor in the development and application of big data is the balance and consideration of data security, personal privacy and commercial confidentiality. The CCP’s opinion proposes to “maintain national data security and protect personal information and commercial secrets as the premise.” These three premise may be contradictory in themselves. One of the notorious characteristics of the CCP regime is that it will violate human rights, violate the privacy rights of the Chinese people, violate the personal interests of the Chinese people, and violate the commercial and economic interests of private companies, serving its so-called “government and country”, essentially It serves the privileged class of the CCP. In other words, the premise of the CCP’s establishment of a basic data system is that it is mutually contradictory, conflicting, and irreconcilable. Any system, rule, or regulation established on such a “basic” like a river of quicksand is destined to be unfair and unfair. Reasonable and not satisfying the rights and interests of ordinary people.
The Xinhua News Agency of the Communist Party of China published relevant questions and answers by the person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, which mentioned the promotion of “four measures”, including “strengthening the party’s overall leadership over the construction of data infrastructure systems; increasing policy support, making data bigger and stronger. Factor-based enterprises; actively encourage experimentation and exploration, support Zhejiang and other regions and qualified industries and enterprises to try first; steadily promote system construction, and gradually improve policies and standards for key links in major areas such as data property rights definition, data circulation, and transactions.”
If the interests of a political party are put first, and the evil CCP implements “comprehensive leadership” over China’s basic data system, it is completely impossible for all interest groups, non-governmental organizations, Chinese individuals, and private enterprises outside the privileged class of the CCP to have The power to participate in the formulation of rules will not obtain the protection of rights and interests from the rules. Therefore, such a basic system is destined to become a tool for the CCP’s vested interest groups to suppress, exploit and extract the rights and interests of the Chinese people.
The CCP authorities have always emphasized the concept of “national data sovereignty”, using data to strengthen the control of Chinese citizens, enterprises and society, and using it to strengthen competition and confrontation with democratic countries.
The destination of the rights and interests of big data, especially when it comes to consumers, ordinary people, and consumer data related to people’s clothing, food, housing, transportation, consumption habits, economic capabilities, purchasing propensity, etc., especially the so-called “market and food basket” (Market-Basket) consumption data is still a new thing that does not clearly define property rights in any country in the world, and legislators around the world are still discussing how to define the ownership of these intellectual property rights. Under the condition that the legal rights and interests have not been clearly defined, the institutions, groups, and enterprises that have collected these big data, at least for now, are their legal owners and can be freely bought, sold, and transferred.
In normal countries, if government agencies collect these data, because the government is supported by taxpayers’ money, these government data must be public and open to all citizens for free. Any resident, even foreign residents and all the people in the world who can collect data through the Internet can freely and unrestrictedly obtain and use these data. When the CCP authorities emphasize the concept of “national data sovereignty”, it is actually another kind of “proletarian revolution”-style plunder, another kind of “struggling local tyrants and dividing land”, and another kind of “capitalist industrial and commercial society”. “Reformation of Socialism” means that the ownership of the data originally belonging to all citizens is once again owned by the Communist Party and the privileged class of the Communist Party, which can be used by them to make a fortune, sell money, make a profit, and be used as a tool to suppress the Chinese people .
Data or big data is indeed a new type of production factor, which is intangible and non-consumable, and can be copied infinitely at almost zero cost. Therefore, the issue of data property rights cannot be constrained by traditional norms such as property rights, circulation, distribution, and governance. However, unclear property rights are not an excuse for the CCP to use official and violent means to act preemptively and preemptively take possession of them. The decision-making and deployment of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, led by the National Development and Reform Commission, concocted this “data 20”, and even set up a team of interdisciplinary experts for research and development. Come to fill the pockets of the CCP.
In today’s Chinese society, those who master the collection, collection, storage, organization, analysis and application of big data are of course those companies in the emerging Internet industry. Financial, credit, purchase history, loan history, etc. data are the assets that the CCP covets and must be obtained quickly. The CCP’s introduction of these measures undoubtedly cast a new spell on these Internet and big data companies. The good days of these Internet and e-commerce tycoons and private business owners are really numbered. The CCP also claims to establish a “national integrated data element registration and certificate storage platform”, “promote the layout of innovative platforms in the field of data elements”, and three-dimensionally promote the “East Count and West Count” project, and it is completely using the government’s powerful means to comprehensively Capture the digital assets of emerging private industries.
Why is the Chinese Communist Party trying to establish a system of data property rights so quickly now? This is because the Chinese economy is in the midst of a complete collapse, and the CCP government needs to find new breakthroughs and new economic growth points. At such a critical moment, Internet financial technology companies with data wealth have become a piece of fat in their eyes. When countries around the world are still exploring the home of intellectual property rights of big data, the definition of power scope, the protection of property rights and the protection of personal rights, the CCP is impatient and jumps up quickly to seize this new productivity tool and new wealth base !
The CCP government’s abuse of data, turning big data into a tool for power agencies to monitor individuals, is undoubtedly fully demonstrated in this plague and epidemic prevention. The CCP’s health code has been promoted and popularized across the country. The health code has become the new normal in the post-epidemic era and a powerful tool for the CCP government to monitor the people. According to calculations by mainland Chinese scholars, it is estimated that by 2025, the total amount of data generated in China will reach 48.6 zettabytes, accounting for about 27.8% of the world‘s total. A zettabyte is a unit of computer storage capacity, and 1 zettabyte is approximately equal to 1 trillion gigabytes. For the Chinese people, for Chinese entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and high-tech talents, the new rules of the CCP mean that the government is the first to get off the ground, and it has obtained all the cheese and picked all the peaches at once. In the future, people can only Watching the CCP’s elite and interest groups make a fortune in the digital economy and digital assets, ordinary Chinese people, the general public, will only find sadly that they are using cameras, health codes, scanners, digital payment tools, In the new digital economy and digital world composed of digital currency, the high-speed computer system and servers behind it, it is just a pawn with little use value.
Doesn’t the CCP’s data property rights system make you shudder?
(The author, Dr. Xie Tian, is Professor of Marketing and John Olin Palme Chair Professor at the Aiken School of Business, University of South Carolina, USA)
Responsible editor: Gao Yi#