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Article Excerpt
Abstract. Recent anthropological analyses of Chinese attitudes towards privacy fail to pay adequate attention to more ordinary, but more widely shared ideas of privacy--ideas that, moreover, have changed dramatically since the 1980s as China has become more and more open to Western countries, cultures, and their network and computing technologies. I begin by reviewing these changes, in part to show how contemporary notions of privacy in China constitute a dialectical synthesis of both traditional Chinese emphases on the importance of the family and the state and more Western emphases on individual rights, including the right to privacy. This same synthesis can be seen in contemporary Chinese law and scholarship regarding privacy. A review of recent work in philosophical ethics demonstrates that information ethics in China is in its very early stages. In this work, privacy is justified as an instrumental good, rather than an intrinsic good. I argue by way of conclusion that privacy protections will continue to expand in China, in part under the pressures of globalization, increasing trade with and exposure to Western societies, and the increasing demands for Western-style individual privacy by young people. Even so, I argue that these emerging conceptions of privacy will remain distinctively Chinese--i.e., they will retain a basic consistency with traditional Chinese values and approaches.
Key words: China, data privacy protection, globalization, privacy, Westernization
Introduction
In Chinese Concepts of Privacy, the authors described Chinese concepts of privacy in different historical periods. Their studies referred primarily to studies of Chinese elites, focusing on the gentry and/or rulers, (1) so this book did not give a sufficient account of the privacy experience of today's ordinary Chinese people. Even more importantly, these studies did not fully reveal important transformations in widely shared Chinese ideas of privacy since the 1980s. Therefore, though the book has a great significance, it neglects these two important aspects of privacy concepts. Hence in this paper, I try to study the transformation of contemporary Chinese consciousness of privacy, and then investigate the present condition of legal protection of privacy and ethical thinking concerning privacy in China. On this foundation, finally, I shall predict the possible future of privacy issues in China.
The changing concept of privacy of contemporary Chinese and emergence of the issue of data privacy
Since 1980, along with reforms and opening up of the country, Chinese society began to experience greater variety in numerous ways. There were more and more ingredients of market economy in the economic structure, and the traditional planned economy system, in fact, no longer existed. In the political domain, democracy and the rule of law obtained initial footholds. In the ideological field, although traditional predominant values still held deep influence on Chinese thought and behavior, a new permeation of Western values was already an undisputable fact.
Due to these drastic changes in contemporary society, various ideas of the average Chinese citizen are now very different from ones in the immediate past. The market economy needs the individual as an independent subject; democracy and the rule of law would be impossible without the free individual to participate therein--and the core of the Western values includes these notions of the individual and free individualism. All these elements help foreground the dramatic changes in thought and consciousness at work in contemporary Chinese society. In this society, people no longer regard individual interests, individual freedom, and individual rights as taboo topics of discussion. In contrast with the not-so-distant past, individual independence and subjectivity have obviously been promoted in their importance and value in social life. Increasing diversity in contemporary Chinese society also makes for greater variety in Chinese ideas of privacy. More and more Chinese citizens begin to give importance to privacy and express concern over protecting emerging rights to privacy.
On the whole, the variety of consciousness of privacy in contemporary China mainly follows three aspects:
First, individuals gradually expand their self-consciousness of
a right to privacy. Earlier, Chinese in conversation, especially
between friends, would usually feel free to talk about anything
(with the exception of some sensitive political topic). But now, if
someone's question to a conversation partner deals with matters that
the partner does not want to make public--the conversation partner
can usually decline to answer the question, on the plea that "this is
my privacy". This plea seems to be proper and legal--in part, because
subsequent questions will no longer deal with the matters that have
now been declared as "private". In the city, even many young people
(especially students in high school or primary school) know to use
"do not interfere with my privacy" as a reason to obstruct what they
see as excessive or intrusive concern on the part of their parents. In
fact, more and more sons and daughters in primary and junior high
school protest against their parents opening their mail without their
permission: indeed, some newspapers and magazines repeatedly advise
parents to respect their sons and daughters' right to privacy-while
in the past, opening the mail of sons and daughters seemed to be
taken as a matter of course. Now, some minors even demand that the
parents must knock on door and be given permission first before
entering their room (2): but in the past, entering freely the room of
minor sons and daughters seemed to be a parents' privilege, "ordained
in nature". Second, many Chinese today are no longer inclined to
interfere with what they perceive to be the privacy of the others:
indeed, to some extent, they now show respect for others' privacy.
For example, before the 1980's, if someone discovered others were
having an extramarital affair, s/he would want to Zhuojian
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE, IN ASCII] them, i.e., to catch the
adulterers in the act. But Chinese today are no longer inclined to
Zhuojian. Even though extramarital sex is not considered morally
legitimate, many Chinese now regard it as a personal affair that
others have no duty to interfere with. It may now be possible that
Zhuojian only occurs between the spouses. That is, if a wife or
husband has such an...
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