The Shanghai Municipal People's Government on November 29 released the Shanghai Data Regulations (《上海市数据条例》), which is to take effect on January 1, 2022. The State Council of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020 released the Opinions on Forging a Sound Institution and Mechanism of Marketizing Factors of Production (《中共中央国务院关于构建更加完善的要素市场化配置体制机制的意见》), which identified data as a novel factor of production.

The Shanghai Data Regulations’ biggest highlight is that it clarifies that civil subjects of data transactions enjoy "data property rights". Article 15 of the Regulations stipulates that natural persons, legal persons, and unincorporated organizations may carry out data trading activities in accordance with law, except for cases otherwise governed by laws and administrative regulations.

In the dynamic development of data trading activities, the interests of the trading subjects of data legally obtained have been legally protected, so that they can explore on their own and mature with the market to ultimately have the boundaries of the rights clarified. It is necessary to draw the attention of the data trading subjects to the premise of the data trading rights and interests enjoyed by them is that the data and the data trading activities be legal, including data collection, storage, use, processing, transmission, provision and disclosure.

The full text of the Regulations is available here.