China’s new rules for app and smartphone providers likely means Apple will be facing more scrutiny from the Chinese government in the coming months. Bloomberg reports more than a half billion Chinese smartphone users are faced with increased monitoring of their mobile app usage.
App stores and providers must establish the identity of users, while monitoring and reporting postings that contain banned content. The legitimacy of developers who post apps for download must also be verified, according to new rules posted on the Cyberspace Administration of China’s website.
App stores and providers are now required to keep a 60 day log of users’ activity, and must now seek a user’s consent before collecting personal information, accessing location data, or a user’s contacts list.
The new rules are just a small part of a broader effort by President Xi Jinping’s government to clamp down on “sensitive” content, which can include anything from critiques of the Communist Party to porn.
“The regulations have been in the pipeline for some time and it’s an exacerbation of the existing controls,” says Willy Lam, an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Center for China Studies. “This is in the wake of an increase in the number of communications, which are seen as critical of the regime.”
While similar laws governing mobile apps have been in effect in China in the past, the new guidelines go a bit further, imposing requirements not just on app stores, but now also on developers and app operators. The sticky part is finding out how officials will enforce the new rules.
“I don’t expect any change from this particular language,” Bird & Bird partner Sven-Michael Werner told Bloomberg. “But this is an issue with Chinese regulations — they can be so vague that they can be used in all sorts of different ways.”
