G-IPTech Lecture with Dr Mei Ning Yan - China’s Recently Proposed Digital ID Scheme: Privacy Challenges and Surveillance Concerns.

In July 2024, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) jointly issued, for a one-month public consultation, a proposed piece of regulation stipulating the introduction of digital IDs and related certificates. The proposed regulation indicates that the application of digital ID is voluntary and will be open to all internet users residing in China regardless of their nationalities.

Internet users will apply via a centralized platform and, upon approval, will be assigned a unique digital ID along with a certificate. From then on, the registered internet user will only need to produce the digital ID certificate for verification of his or her real identity when requested by any internet service provider (ISP). The explanatory note attached to the proposed regulation emphasizes that these new measures will strengthen privacy protection of internet users by minimizing the risk of excessive collection and retention by ISPs of the personal data of internet users on the pretext of fulfilling the statutory requirements of real name registration.

However, the proposed digital ID scheme attracted wide skepticism both within China and beyond, with many doubting its real motive. Instead, some predicted that this digital ID scheme would soon become compulsory. People who fail to obtain a certificate or who have had their certificate revoked will then be denied any internet access. Moreover, the MPS is said to be actively preparing to provide a centralized platform. As such, will the whole digital ID scheme serve as a comprehensive and round-the-clock surveillance system, prying on the country’s internet users?

This presentation will examine the proposed digital ID scheme together with the serious concerns raised, analyzing whether the scheme will, in effect, act as the last piece of jigsaw puzzle in transforming China into a digital totalitarian state.  

About the Speaker:

Dr. Mei Ning YAN is currently a visiting scholar at the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast. She recently took up an associate research fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London.

Coming from Hong Kong, Dr. Yan has been a visiting scholar at the Philip K. H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong, since 2016. She is also an honorary research associate there.

Dr. Yan obtained an LLM degree in human rights and emergency law at QUB in 1995. She has extensive experience in research and teaching both in the common law legal system (mainly of Hong Kong) and in the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Yan specializes in media and information law. Obtaining a PhD in Law from the University of Essex in 1998, her thesis was on regulation of transfrontier television in Western Europe and mainland China. For some 30 years, she has written widely on defamation law, privacy law, obscenity law, and media regulation and policy of mainland China and Hong Kong, often with comparative perspectives.

Dr. Yan taught at Journalism Department of Hong Kong Baptist University, Journalism School and Law School of Shantou University in mainland China, and Faculty of Law of The University of Hong Kong. Before joining academia, she worked as a journalist in the 1980s and 1990s covering Hong Kong and Greater China.