By Zhang Hui and Leng Shumei
China’s top legislature said in a report on May 25 it will prioritize public health legislation this
year, as well as formulate laws on biosecurity, personal information protection and data security,
which analysts believe is intended to plug the loopholes exposed by China’s COVID-19 response.
The main task of China’s top legislature in the next phase will be to formulate laws concerning
national security and social management, including a biosecurity law, a personal information
protection law and data security law, according to the report of the Standing Committee of the
National People’s Congress (NPC), delivered by the committee’s chairman Li Zhanshu to the third
session of the 13th NPC.
The NPC Standing Committee also plans to revise the wildlife protection law, the law on the
prevention and control of infectious diseases, the frontier health and quarantine law and the
emergency response law, according to the report.
China’s draft biosecurity law, which was submitted for its second review in late April, focused on
preventing and responding to biological threats, safeguarding people’s lives and health, promoting
the sound development of biotechnology and protecting biological resources and the ecological
environment.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of biosecurity, which has been included in
China’s national security system. Chinese military experts have suggested China establish a
permanent national defense force on biosecurity to efficiently deal with a biological disaster or
even potential warfare.
The draft also said that a monitoring and early warning system should be put in place to prevent
and control major new or sudden outbreaks of infectious diseases and epidemics related to animals
and plants.
Liu Changqiu, an associate researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the
Global Times on Monday that although China had revised several laws after the SARS crisis of
2003, the pandemic revealed problems and gaps in implementation and supervision, as some
existing laws have different regulations on who is responsible for the same issue.
For example, China’s infectious disease prevention control law states that local medical institutes
should report and manage an epidemic, but, according to the law on emergency response, local
governments should report and coordinate the response to a public health emergency, Liu said.
He predicted that the top legislature would clarify who should take responsibility for responding to
a public health emergency – whether the local government or local disease control departments – to
facilitate the emergency response procedure.
Meanwhile, analysts said that governments at all levels should leave the scientific assessment of
the epidemic to professionals.
“These revisions to the laws will be more systematic and coordinated,” Liu said, noting that
punishment for violators would probably be increased.
Regulations to protect whistleblowers in a public health emergency, such as Wuhan doctor Li
Wenliang who tried to report on the coronavirus in the early stages of the pandemic, are likely to
be included in future laws.
Li was one of the eight “whistleblowers” who attempted to warn other medics of the coronavirus
outbreak but were reprimanded by local police. He died as a result of the coronavirus infection on
February 7, which led to an outpouring of grief and anger.
As they combated the disease, Chinese governments at local levels collected residents’ personal
information, travel and medical history to screen those who had close contacts with people from
worst-hit regions, and set up applications based on big data to enable safe work resumption, which
highlights the significance of personal data protection, experts said.
The top legislature’s key tasks in the next phase have combined national security and people’s
needs, as reflected in China’s COVID-19 response this year, Qin An, head of the Beijing-based
Institute of China Cyberspace Strategy, told the Global Times on May 25.
The country needs a data security law to protect and improve China’s ability in detecting and
handling data theft and cyber attacks in the future, especially when dealing with a major public
health crisis, Qin said.
Chinese online security firm 360 said that hackers from India and Vietnam have been attacking
China’s key medical institutions in order to steal information and data related to COVID-19,
according to a statement 360 sent to the Global Times.
Attacks against medical systems may lead to wider spread of the virus, public panic, social chaos
and the information stolen may be used for biological weapons attacks, analysts said.
