BEIJING - Chinese authorities have been reiterating they are committed to protecting people's privacy and personal information. And the heavy fines they imposed on China's local ride-hailing giant and its top executives show they mean what they say.
The Cyberspace Administration of China said its investigation found the ride-hailing giant had illegally collected millions of pieces of users' information since June 2015, and carried out data processing that seriously affected national security. Aside from the over 8 billion yuan fine on Didi on the penalty, the cybersecurity regulator also fined the company's founder and chief executive Cheng Wei and president Liu Qing 1 million yuan each.
But since data security has become an important part of national security, more efforts are needed to boost vigilance and bolster the fight against data piracy. As one of China's biggest and most influential tech companies, Didi, unfortunately, failed to fulfil its responsibility to protect users' information and thus abused their trust.
China has made progress in strengthening the legal framework for cybersecurity in recent years by, among other things, improving regulations and mechanisms for collecting, processing, managing and making good use of data resources.