On March 22, 2022 at 2 pm EDT, the Canada China Business Council (CCBC) hosted Session #2 in the Navigating Complexity: US-China Policy Impact on Canada three-part webinar series. This – like the morning session – featured Samm Sacks, Senior Fellow at Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center & Cyber Policy Fellow, New America.

Click here to download the handout PDF. 

The presentation focused on China’s data regulatory regime – an increasingly relevant topic for foreign companies (including those from Canada) operating in the China market. Firms from a variety of sectors – such as consumer/retail goods and/or healthcare – are increasingly being regulated as technology companies. As such, the number one regulatory risk for many companies – in the view of Ms. Sacks – is regulatory compliance with new Chinese data laws and policies. There are, as a result, distinct implications for foreign business and investment in the coming years.

The link to the video presentation is available upon request. Please contact your regional Chapter Director to request access:

• Atlantic: Edward Dai
• Quebec: Philippe Jeanneau
• Ontario: Jeff Zhang
• Prairies: Philippe Jeanneau
• BC: Philippe Jeanneau
• Beijing: Noah Fraser
• Shanghai: Edward Dai

China’s cybersecurity and digital legal/regulatory regime is years in the making and best understood as a complicated “matrix of interlocking parts,” each beholden to different/varying political, security, and economic goals. The regime is rapidly being built out as government and quasi-government stakeholders increasingly view data as a strategic and economic asset.

The implications of this process for foreign businesses are not black and white, as the media sometimes portrays. The reality, Ms. Sacks explained, is far messier. Firms must contend with a range of regulatory risks, including “blackbox” security reviews, domestic blacklisting, on-site inspections, and even the revocation of business licences. Beyond regulatory concerns, MNCs must also manage the politization of data issues and broader bilateral conflict between Washington and Beijing.

Further discussion revolved around specific rules and regulations (such as the Multi-Level Protections Scheme), important domestic stakeholders (the CAC and MPS, for example), and the current (unresolved) debate surrounding data localization practises in China.

CCBC thanks CanExport Associations for partial funding support for this program. Registration was free of charge for members; $25+tax for non-members per session. Simultaneous French interpretation was available for each session.

About the speaker:

Samm Sacks
Senior Fellow at Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center & Cyber Policy Fellow, New America

Samm Sacks is a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and a Cybersecurity Policy Fellow at New America. She also consults corporate clients on China’s technology policies.  Her research examines China’s information and communications technology (ICT) policies, with a focus on China’s cybersecurity legal system, the U.S.-China technology relationship, and the geopolitics of data privacy and cross-border data flows. She has worked as an analyst of China’s technology policies for the last decade, both in the private sector and in the national security community. Previously she launched the industrial cybersecurity business for Siemens in Asia and led China tech coverage for the political risk firm Eurasia Group. Her writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, MIT Tech Review, Slate, and she has testified numerous times before Congress on the U.S.-China technology relationship. She reads and speaks Mandarin and was a Fulbright Scholar in China.