China lays out vision for how data will power economic growth

• Beijing wants to better utilize China's massive trove of data
• Plan is for data ownership system with Chinese characteristics

China issued its most sweeping blueprint for data ownership in a sign of how important a role it plays in Xi Jinping's vision for the world's second-biggest economy.

Authorities vowed to create a "compliant and efficient" governance system that would lower the threshold for obtaining important data, while ensuring it isn't used by companies to compete unfairly, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday. The guidelines, issued by the Communist Party's Central Committee and the State Council on 2 December., also promote greater interconnectivity between regional, industry, and national data centers.

The blueprint intends to "fully execute the country's advantages in its massive scope of data and rich application scenarios," and "provide new momentum for economic development," Xinhua said.

The guidelines add to efforts by the government in recent years to exert greater influence over how data is collected and used by China's biggest technology companies. That campaign has included regulatory actions against firms such as the ride-hailing company Didi Global Inc., and made increasingly prescient Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma's prediction that data would be as valuable a resource as oil and water. 

Under the new guidelines, data would be categorized and graded based on its sensitivity, which would pave the way to "gradually form a data ownership rights system with Chinese characteristics." While the government would be able to access corporate and institutional data under existing laws, the new guidelines say that certain usage restrictions would be applied to that access.

The increased sway that the government has gained over data in China has fueled concern authorities could uses that power to obtain user information via services like those provided globally by Huawei Technologies Co. and ByteDance Ltd.'s TikTok. Worries have also surfaced about the security of sensitive user data following a record domestic database breach this year.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.