FRT Regulation in China

TL;DR

This paper examines China's unique regulatory approach to facial recognition technology, highlighting its legal framework, challenges, and the asymmetric model driven by government interests and prior systematic preferences.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of China's FRT regulation, illustrating the asymmetric regulatory model through case studies and evaluating underlying legal and systemic factors.

Findings

Regulations restrict FRT development in some contexts but are less effective when used by the government.

China's regulatory model is asymmetric, favoring government interests over individual data protections.

Systematic preferences prior to recent laws influence China's distinctive regulatory approach.

Abstract

This paper first introduces China's legal framework regulating facial recognition technology (FRT) and analyzes the underlying problems. Although current laws and regulations have restricted the development of FRT under some circumstances, these restrictions may function poorly when the technology is installed by the government or when it is deployed for the purpose of protecting public security. We use two cases to illustrate this asymmetric regulatory model, which can be traced to systematic preferences that existed prior to recent legislative efforts advancing personal data protection. Based on these case studies and evaluation of relevant regulations, this paper explains why China has developed this distinctive asymmetric regulatory model towards FRT specifically and personally data generally.