China’s annual “Two Sessions” policy jamboree on Tuesday produced a commitment to create a “national data bureau,” which the state-run Global Times hailed as an important step toward establishing the “digital China” of the future.

Observers familiar with Communist China’s long history of data theft and high-tech oppression may be rather less enthusiastic about the announcement.

The Global Times insisted the data bureau will pose absolutely no threat to anyone’s data security, as it will no doubt be secured with the same care and attention to detail as Chinese virus labs:

The proposed bureau will be administered by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planner, and it will be responsible for advancing the development of data-related fundamental institutions, coordinating the integration, sharing, development and application of data resources, and pushing forward the planning and building of a digital China, the digital economy and a digital society, among other functions.

“The establishment of the bureau is fully in line with international practice, and also in line with the trend that the global economy is trying to create new growth points in the post-pandemic era,” Zuo Xiaodong, vice president of the China Information Security Research Institute, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

The US and the EU have designated specialized agencies in terms of digital security, but they have not established similar independent agencies in terms of using data as an engine to promote the development of the digital economy, Zuo added. 

The Global Times spent the rest of its report gushing over the boundless potential of “digital China,” but none of its contacts in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) — the policy advisory board that meets alongside the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) legislature during the “Two Sessions” — ever got around to explaining exactly what the National Data Bureau would do. Other sources make it sound like a consolidation of several existing agencies.

Reuters on Tuesday reported the CPPCC envisions the bureau taking over “certain functions of the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) and the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, which oversees China’s Internet.”

The NDRC is China’s macroeconomic central planning agency. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Wednesday speculated that the National Data Bureau would take over “big data” infrastructure from the NDRC, becoming responsible for building and maintaining the physical hardware needed, while most of its regulatory functions would be taken from the heavy-handed Cyberspace Affairs Commission (CAC).

“Creating the National Data Bureau also reflects Beijing’s design to maintain control over certain information and to use such data for state-led development initiatives, similar to how it oversees other economic inputs like land, capital and labor,” the SCMP said.

“While details about the new bureau such as its size, budget and the officials to lead it remain unknown, the new agency forms a major part of the State Council’s broader restructuring plans, which include an empowered role for the Ministry of Science and Technology to counter US technological containment and creation of the new National Financial Regulatory Commission to oversee the country’s banking and insurance assets,” the report added.

China has been clamping down on data transfers across its borders, so some analysts speculated the new bureau might help to deal with the mountain of compliance paperwork generated by those restrictions.

“China has in recent years strengthened oversight over data collected in the country, motivated by fears that unchecked collection by private firms could allow state actors to weaponize information on infrastructure and other national interests, and the belief that data has become a strategic economic resource,” Reuters observed.