Reuses other publishers' content, in China

Regulation on the Protection of the Right to Network Dissemination of Information, State Council Order No. 468 (2006), as amended 2013, Arts. 14-17, 23 · Read the law's page

• Applies if you are a network service provider that offers a search or link service.
• Disconnect the link to an allegedly infringing work on receiving the rights holder's written notice, and you keep a safe harbour from damages liability; you lose it and bear joint infringement liability if you knew or should have known that the linked work was infringing.
• Act on a notice immediately and forward it to the party that supplied the material; a valid notice names the rights holder, identifies the work and its network address, and includes preliminary proof of infringement.
• Expect the party that supplied the material to be able to submit a written counter-statement to have the material or link restored, after which the rights holder may not issue a further notice over the same material.

Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China (as amended by the Decision of October 28, 2025), Art. 23 · Read the law's page

• This binds a network operator, meaning any organization that owns or manages a network or provides services over one, so it reaches every declared activity and every declared role; the level of protection follows the classification of the network under the classified protection system.
• Formulate internal security management rules and operating procedures, designate a person responsible for network security and put network security protection responsibility into effect (Article 23, item 1).
• Take technical measures against computer viruses, network attacks and network intrusions (Article 23, item 2).
• Monitor and record the network's operating status and security incidents and keep the network logs for not less than six months (Article 23, item 3).
• Take data classification, backup of important data and encryption measures (Article 23, item 4).

Provisions on the Administration of Internet News Information Services, Cyberspace Administration of China Order No. 1 (2017), Arts. 5-6, 11, 15 · Read the law's page

• Obtain an internet news information service licence before providing an internet news information service to the public, including a news-reprinting service or a news-dissemination platform service; do not operate without one or beyond its scope.
• Meet the licence conditions: be a legal person lawfully established within China, with a PRC-citizen principal officer and editor-in-chief, and keep dedicated editorial, content-review and technical-security staff and systems.
• If you apply to gather and publish news, you must yourself be a news organisation or a unit under a news-and-propaganda department's supervision.
• Appoint an editor-in-chief who bears overall responsibility for your news content, and register that person with the cyberspace administration.
• When reprinting news information, source it only from central news organisations or provincial-level and above news organisations within a state-designated list, and credit the original source, author, original headline and editor.
• When reprinting, do not distort the original headline's meaning or the news content, keep the source traceable, and separately comply with copyright law.
• You carry no equivalent reprinting duty if you only link to, rather than reprint, another outlet's news.

Copyright Law, Art. 5(2), Art. 24(2)-(4) (2020 revision) · Read the law's page

• You need not seek permission to use pure factual news reports (the news of the day); they are excluded from copyright protection outright.
• You may appropriately quote a published work in another work to introduce, comment on or explain it, without the copyright holder's consent or payment, if you credit the author and title and do not unreasonably prejudice the copyright holder.
• You may unavoidably reproduce or quote an already-published work when reporting news in a newspaper, periodical, radio or television broadcast, on the same conditions.
• If you are a newspaper, periodical, radio station or television station, you may reprint or broadcast another such outlet's already-published current-affairs article on political, economic or religious questions, unless the copyright holder has declared reprinting or broadcasting impermissible.
• Do not assume these exceptions reach a systematic news aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets: none is capped at a headline or extract length, and no reported Chinese court decision applies them to one.

Arts. 8 and 13, Provisions on the Management of Network Product Security Vulnerabilities (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Cyberspace Administration of China and Ministry of Public Security) · Read the law's page

• Applies to a network operator, meaning the owner or manager of a network or a provider of services over one, so it reaches an app developer that runs its own servers or service (Articles 2 and 8).
• On finding or learning that your network, information system or equipment has a security vulnerability, take measures at once, verify the vulnerability in good time and complete its repair (Article 8).
• Keep a channel for receiving vulnerability information open and unobstructed, and keep the receipt logs for at least 6 months (Article 5).

Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China, Art. 27 · Read the law's page

• This binds any organization or individual engaging in a data-processing activity, regardless of sector, and reaches data generally rather than only personal information.
• Establish and maintain a full-process data-security management system covering the collection, storage, use, processing, transmission, provision, and disclosure of the data you process, and provide data-security education and training to your staff.
• Take the technical measures and other necessary measures appropriate to your processing to keep your data secure.
• Where you process data over the internet or another information network, meet this duty in addition to, not instead of, your classified-protection obligations under the Cybersecurity Law, already this jurisdiction's own deferred network-operator duty.
• If you process important data, an official classification this corpus cannot flag against on its own, designate a person responsible for data security and a managing body, and implement that responsibility.

Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China, Art. 29 · Read the law's page

• Strengthen risk monitoring of your data-processing activity, and on discovering a data-security defect, vulnerability, or other risk, immediately take remedial measures.
• On an actual data-security incident, immediately take disposal measures, promptly notify affected users as provided, and report the incident to the competent authority; the statute states no numeric deadline, only immediacy and promptness.
• This binds the same data processor as this jurisdiction's Data Security Law data-security-program duty; it adds a risk-monitoring and incident-response duty rather than reaching a different party.
• A processor of important data carries an additional, periodic risk-assessment-and-reporting duty under Article 30 tied to the important-data classification rather than to any activity in this vocabulary, so it is not flagged as its own instrument.

Issued by CAC, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security, and State Administration for Market Regulation on 31 December 2021; effective 1 March 2022

• Disclose your use of recommendation algorithms in your service rules.
• Give users the ability to opt out of personalized recommendations and to view non-personalized alternatives.
• Do not use algorithms to apply unreasonable differential pricing to users.
• Do not use algorithms designed to addict users.
• Do not use algorithms to manipulate public opinion.
• Let users easily turn off algorithmic content curation.
• Register significant algorithms with the CAC.

Regulation on Network Data Security Management (State Council Order 790), Arts. 9-11 · Read the law's page

• Applies to a network data processor, meaning an individual or organization that decides for itself the purpose and means of processing network data, for processing in China (Articles 2 and 62); because that reaches almost any organization running a system, this instrument flags on every activity and role this corpus can express.
• Protect network data on the basis of classified cybersecurity protection: keep data security management rules in place and use encryption, backup, access control and security authentication (Article 9).
• On finding a security defect, vulnerability or similar risk in a network product or service you provide, take remedial measures at once, tell users as required and report to the competent department; where national security or the public interest is endangered, also report to the competent department within 24 hours (Article 10).
• Keep an emergency plan for network data security incidents; when an incident occurs, start the plan at once, act to stop the harm spreading and remove the hazard, and report to the competent department as provided (Article 11).
• Where an incident harms the lawful rights and interests of individuals or organizations, promptly tell those affected the incident, the risk, the harm and the remedial steps taken, by phone, text message, instant message, email or public announcement, unless a law or administrative regulation allows non-notification (Article 11).

Measures for Labeling AI-Generated Synthetic Content (国信办通字〔2025〕2号), issued by CAC, MIIT, MPS and NRTA, 2025, Art. 6 · Read the law's page

• If you provide an online information content dissemination service in China, check the metadata of published files for an implicit AI-generation label and, where it marks the content as AI-generated, add a prominent notice around the published content that it is AI-generated or synthetic.
• Where the metadata carries no implicit label but the user declared the content AI-generated, add a prominent notice around it that it may be AI-generated; where there is neither a label nor a declaration but you detect an explicit label or other traces of generation, treat the content as suspected AI-generated and add a prominent notice saying so.
• Provide a labeling function and remind users to declare whether the content they publish is AI-generated.
• In those first three cases, add the content's generation attributes, your platform's name or code and a content number to the file metadata.

Measures for the Administration of National Cybersecurity Incident Reporting (Cyberspace Administration of China, issued September 11, 2025), Arts. 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14 · Read the law's page

• On discovering or becoming aware of a cybersecurity incident affecting your own operations, grade it against China's four-tier National Cybersecurity Incident Classification and Grading Guide (especially major, major, relatively major, ordinary), and report only where you grade it relatively major or above; an ordinary incident carries no report duty under this instrument.
• Where the incident involves critical information infrastructure, report to your sector's protection-work department and to the public security organ within 1 hour of discovering or becoming aware of the incident.
• Where you are a department of a central or state organ, or a directly affiliated unit of one, report to your own department's cyberspace affairs unit within 2 hours of discovering or becoming aware of the incident.for a public body
• Every other network operator must report to the cyberspace administration department of its own province within 4 hours of discovering or becoming aware of the incident.
• Where your industry carries its own reporting rule, also report as your industry's regulator requires, and report a suspected crime to the public security organ promptly.
• Where an organization or individual provides you network-security or system-operation-and-maintenance services under contract, require that provider by contract to promptly report to you any cybersecurity incident it discovers through monitoring, and to assist your own reporting under these Measures; this is the paragraph that reaches a cloud host, managed-security vendor, or AI operator serving you as its customer.
• Within 30 days of completing disposal of a relatively major incident or above, submit a summary report covering the incident's cause, your emergency response, the harm caused, accountability, remediation, and lessons learned, through the same channel you used for the original report.
• This binds a network operator, meaning the owner, manager, or network service provider of a network, that builds or operates a network, or provides a service through a network, inside China; because that reaches almost any organization running a system, this instrument flags on every activity and role this corpus can express rather than a narrower guess.
• A major or especially major incident additionally triggers an escalation between government bodies up to the national cyberspace administration after you report; that further escalation is not a step you perform yourself.
• Taking reasonable and necessary protective measures, disposing of the incident under your emergency plan, effectively reducing its impact and harm, and reporting it promptly as these Measures require can draw lighter treatment, or none at all, of the liability of your unit and its personnel for the incident.