China premier stresses data security after alleged leak affecting 1 billion Chinese residents triggers concerns

Premier Li Keqiang called on government bodies to ‘defend information security’, which has become a rising concern as authorities collect more citizen data

The comments come after what could be the largest ever data leak for China, with data sets showing names, birth dates, ID numbers and other sensitive information

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A person on a hacker forum claimed to be selling data on 1 billion Chinese citizens stolen from Shanghai police servers. The size of the leak spurred online discussions that were quickly censored. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 2:30pm, 8 Jul 2022Updated: 2:32pm, 8 Jul 2022

Premier Li Keqiang stressed the importance of information security at a State Council meeting on Wednesday, a message that has taken on new urgency in the wake of an alleged data leak of 1 billion Chinese residents.

Chinese government bodies must “defend information security … to protect personal information, privacy and confidential corporate information” so people can feel secure when submitting data for certain public services, according to a statement summarising the cabinet meeting.

The statement did not mention specific security issues or the alleged data leak.

The main topic of the meeting was “digital government development”, a general term referring to Beijing’s plan to leverage technologies like big data and artificial intelligence for social governance and public services. The line about security did not come until the end of the statement, but securing data has become an increasingly important priority for the government, especially since the enactment of two related laws last year.

Li’s comments come after a data set allegedly containing the information of 1 billion Chinese residents appeared last week on the hacker community Breach Forum. The poster, using the handle “ChinaDan”, said the data included names, addresses, identification numbers and mobile phone numbers. The person was charging 10 bitcoin, or about US$200,000, for the full data set.