Guiyang mayor offers innovative solutions for data transaction issues

Chen Yan, a deputy to the National People's Congress and the mayor of Guiyang, the capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province, recently spoke about the problems China faces in data transactions and provided solutions to address these problems.

As a national comprehensive trial zone for big data, Guiyang has issued three unprecedented regional regulations that focus on data sharing and management. However, there are still many challenges in the legislation on data transactions.

According to Chen, one of the challenges is the undefined nature of data ownership, which makes legislation on the data trade even harder. On one hand, the question of which law is applicable to data-related cases is unsolved. On the other, whether data ownership should go to the data producer or the data holder is also unsettled, Chen said.

What's more, there is no mature market for data transactions on a global scale, with an absence of existing mechanisms that can estimate costs and profits of transactions. There is no nationally unified and reliable data circulation system to support transactions.

Based on these problems, Chen offered several possible solutions.

First, Guiyang should be encouraged to complete its regional legislation on big data. Second, Guiyang will launch trials on data trade circulation. Finally, Guiyang, especially Guian New Area, will promote data marketization, transforming data from a kind of resource to a type of capital.

This transition will hopefully become an integrated part of the dual-circulation development paradigm and help to achieve a balance among different regions of China.