The Central Bank of China appears to be preparing new, stricter rules for the country’s financial system, which will affect privacy and personal information.
According to a report released in the local language, the PBoC’s Central Reporting Center has prepared a new version of the personal credit report that could lead to the launch of new rules by May 2020, maybe even later this month.
The new rules are expected to make significant changes to leasing services and other types of financial transactions. Previously, only basic personal information was required, for example to take out a loan, but this was not considered sufficient to address potential problems in the credit sector.
For this reason, new rules have been proposed that will require the collection of much more personal data, such as education, employment, email addresses, physical addresses of residence, personal telephone numbers, as well as the data of spouses.
There will also be information requested from public institutions, such as telecommunication companies, and those relating to payments of taxes and public services, possible rulings or administrative sanctions, information from law enforcement agencies and so on.
These new rules are considered excessively restrictive by many Chinese, to the extent that suggestions to use bitcoin as an alternative have begun to spread.
In particular, there are those who are starting to suggest that in China BTC can be used not only as a store of value but also as a means of exchange for making payments, so as to circumvent the new rules which are so restrictive with regard to privacy.
It should not be forgotten that China is not a free country and the state still holds a power that goes far beyond the western or liberal ones.
A great many Chinese are fully aware of this and not everyone welcomes it. On the contrary, an increase in interference by the Chinese state in the lives of its citizens could actually be perceived by many Chinese as an excess of deprivation of liberty, prompting many to start using financial tools subject to less control.
Bitcoin is also censorship-resistant, so even if the Chinese state wanted to impose restrictions on its use it would be powerless in this respect since BTC’s P2P exchanges are technically impossible to stop by anyone in any way.
For the time being, this seems only a hypothesis, however, if the new, restrictive rules were to come into force as early as January, then it may only be a few weeks before the consequences are felt.
