Asia’s Privacy Reform Bills: Variable Speeds

Abstract

Never before have there been so many draft laws and Bills in Asian jurisdictions awaiting finalisation and enactment. The jurisdictions with the most important changes to existing drafts are China and Sri Lanka. Brunei becomes the latest Asian country with a data privacy draft law. However, there are also developments in countries in north-east Asia, south Asia and south-east Asia. Some countries, however, are in the ‘slow lane’ in moving reform forward, particularly India and Indonesia, where major reform Bills have languished for more than a year – due partly to COVID 19 disruptions.

Developments in reforms (if any) in all 26 countries in Asia are noted at least briefly in this article. The overall picture is that Asia is undergoing a more intense transformation of its data privacy laws than any other region of the world at present.

This article is the 2021 update to my Asian Data Privacy Laws: Trade and Human Rights Perspectives (OUP, 2014).

Keywords: privacy, data protection, Asia, China, India