ChinaCopyright Law, Article 24 (closed list of exceptions, no text-and-data-mining item)
Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China (2020 revision), Art. 24
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What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
In force since 1 June 2021.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 29 August 2026.
What it requires
- Do not rely on Article 24's closed list of exceptions to justify training an AI model on scraped copyrighted content; none of its items covers text-and-data mining or AI training.
- Treat use of copyrighted material beyond personal study, brief quotation, or the other listed exceptions as needing the rightholder's permission.
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 24 sets out a closed list of permitted uses that do not require the copyright holder's consent or payment: personal study, brief quotation for commentary, unavoidable reproduction in news reporting, and reprinting current-affairs commentary absent a reservation, among others. There is no general fair-use clause and no text-and-data-mining exception, so training an AI model on scraped copyrighted content has no dedicated statutory basis under this article.
Courts have so far worked the fair-use-adjacent question through AI output cases rather than collection: the Guangzhou Internet Court found AI-generated images infringing in February 2024 (secondary-sourced, the Ultraman case), while the Hangzhou Internet Court held in September 2024, upheld that December, that training itself can be lawful absent intent to plagiarize expression or unreasonable prejudice to the rightholder (secondary-sourced); neither directly answers whether scraping for training is itself permitted.
When LexLint raises it
trains_models
Read the law
official text, Ministry of Commerce IP database (ipr.mofcom.gov.cn)
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.