China’s government has proposed establishing a joint venture with local technology giants that would oversee the lucrative data they collect from hundreds of millions of consumers, according to people familiar with the matter.
The proposal is among a slate of options being considered to crystallize Beijing’s goal of gaining greater control over the data amassed by online behemoths from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to up-and-comers like ByteDance Ltd. and Meituan. Companies were encouraged this month to open up data in areas from e-commerce to social media to promote healthy development of the sharing and online economies in a report that outlined the Communist Party’s priorities.
"Data is extremely complicated, ” said Ma."There’s a fine line between ensuring users’ privacy and opening up data to sharing.”One of the key hurdles for such a joint venture would be existing rules around data privacy, which give individuals the right to decide how their information is used, said one of the people. Putting consumer data under the oversight of a company or the government would require changes to the law, the person said.
With the development of big data analysis and artificial intelligence, the way big tech collects and uses data has become a sensitive issue for the party.