XU YUYU was a poor 18-year-old student from the coastal province of Shandong when, on the eve of going to university in 2016, she was defrauded of the savings that her family had painstakingly accumulated for her. She died of a heart attack that was caused, a court said, by the fraud. Ms Xu’s fate sparked an impassioned debate in China about data privacy because the scammer, Chen Wenhui, had paid a hacker for stealing her personal details. He was sentenced to life in jail for theft of private information.
徐玉玉是一个来自沿海省份山东的18岁的贫困学生，在2016年即将进入大学的前夕，她家人为她辛苦积攒的积蓄被骗走。法院说，她死于由诈骗事件引起的心脏病发作。徐女士的命运在中国引发了一场关于数据隐私的激烈辩论。骗子陈文辉，曾付钱给黑客来窃取她的个人信息。他因侵犯个人信息罪而被判终身监禁。
China has a reputation for lax controls over the gathering, storage and use of digital data about individuals. But sensitivities about such matters are growing, and not just when information is stolen.
中国在收集、存储和使用个人数据方面管理松懈是出名的。但对此类敏感事件逐渐增多，而且不仅仅只涉及信息被盗。
This month a court in the eastern city of Nanjing agreed to hear a case brought by a government-controlled consumers’ group against Baidu, China’s largest search engine. The group claims that a Baidu app illegally monitors users’ phone calls without telling them. At the same time, Ant Financial, the financial arm of Alibaba, the country’s largest e-commerce group, apologised for a default setting on its mobile-money app that automatically enrolled customers in a credit-scoring scheme, called Sesame Credit, without users’ consent. The third of China’s big three internet firms, Tencent, also dealt with a storm of criticism after the head of one of China’s largest car firms said Pony Ma, Tencent’s founder, “must be watching” all messages on WeChat, the firm’s popular social-media app, “every single day”.
本月，中国东部城市南京的一家法院同意审理由政府控制的消费者组织对百度提起的诉讼。百度是中国最大的搜索引擎。该组织声称，百度的一款应用在未告知用户的情况下，非法监控用户的通话。与此同时，中国最大的电子商务集团阿里巴巴的金融部门蚂蚁金融，为其移动钱包应用程序的默认设置道歉。该应用程序在没有获得用户同意的情况下，自动为客户注册了一项名为芝麻信用的信用评分计划。中国三大互联网公司的第三家腾讯也遭遇了一场批判风暴，此前中国一家大型汽车公司的负责人表示，腾讯的创始人马化腾“一定每天都在看”微信上的所有信息。微信是腾讯旗下的热门社交媒体应用。
Consumers in China have good cause to worry. Data collected through one medium can often end up in another. A man who talked on his mobile phone one day about picking strawberries said that when he used his phone the next day to open Toutiao, a news aggregator driven by artificial intelligence (AI), his news was all about strawberries. His post on the experience went viral in January. Toutiao denied it was snooping but conceded, blandly, that the story revealed a growing public “awareness of privacy”.
中国的消费者确实该担心了。通过一种媒介收集的数据最后通常会出现在另一种媒介中。有一天，一位在手机上谈论摘草莓的人说，第二天他用手机打开“头条”，一个由人工智能(AI)驱动的新闻聚合网站，他的新闻全是关于草莓的。他的关于这一经历的帖子在1月份迅速传播开来。“头条”否认这是在窥探，但他坦然的承认，这一事件揭示了一个日益增长的公众“隐私意识”。
Cultural evolution 文化进化
Anxiety about it is indeed growing, but from a low base. The Chinese word for privacy, yinsi, has a negative connotation of secrecy. Things that in the West are taboo in conversation between strangers—for example, asking about the other person’s salary—are often discussed in China.
对它的焦虑确实在增长，但起点很低。中国的“隐私”这个词，有“保密”的负面含义。在西方，在陌生人交谈中禁忌的话题，例如询问对方的工资，在中国经常被谈到。
Such traditions inform behaviour in the digital world. The Boston Consulting Group says that in a dozen countries it surveyed in 2013, three-quarters of respondents outside China stated that caution was necessary when sharing personal information online. But only half of those polled in China agreed. In 2015 Harvard Business Review, a journal, tried to estimate what value people in different countries attached to personal data. It found that Chinese would pay less to protect data from their government-issued identification cards and credit cards than people from America, Britain and Germany. More than 60% of respondents in a large survey conducted by China Youth Daily, a state-owned newspaper, said that the default settings in their mobile apps allowed their personal information to be shared with third parties. Chinese law did not define what counts as personal information until a cyber-security bill took effect last year.
这些传统也反映在数字世界里。波士顿咨询集团表示，在2013年接受调查的12个国家中，有四分之三的中国以外的受访者表示，在网上分享个人信息时，谨慎是必要的。但只有一半的中国受访者表示同意。2015年，一份期刊哈佛商业评论试图估算不同国家的人对个人数据的重视程度。该机构发现，与来自美国、英国和德国的人相比，中国人在保护中国政府发放的身份证和信用卡支付的数据上所花费用要少一些。国有报纸中国青年报进行的一项大型调查显示，超过60%的受访者表示，他们手机应用的默认设置允许将他们的个人信息与第三方分享。在去年网络安全法案生效之前，中国的法律并没有定义什么是个人信息。
Two things are helping to change public attitudes. One is rising concern about online fraud, a huge problem in China. A survey in 2016 by the Internet Society of China found that no less than 84% of respondents said they had suffered from some form of data theft. The number of cases seems to be rising. In 2017, according to Legal Daily, a newspaper, the police investigated 4,900 cases of theft of personal information, resulting in the arrests of over 15,000 people. That is twice the number of cases and four times as many suspects as in the previous year. Worries about data theft are not the same as concerns about privacy. But the two sentiments often overlap.
有两件事正在帮助改变公众的态度。一个日益提升的对网络欺诈的担忧，这是中国的一个大问题。中国互联网协会在2016年进行的一项调查发现，不少于84%的受访者表示他们曾遭受过某种形式的数据盗窃，该类事件似乎还在上升。据法制日报报道，在2017年，警方调查了4900起盗窃个人信息的案件，导致超过1.5万人被逮捕。这是前一年案件数量的两倍，是前一年嫌疑人数量的四倍。对数据失窃的担忧与对隐私的担忧不一样。但这两种观点常常是重叠的。
The other big change is the surprising emergence of China’s internet companies as lobbyists for better data protection, even though their motives are mixed. On the one hand, the data they are scooping up from consumers are becoming an ever more prized commodity. The companies want to use the data in pursuit of global dominance in the business of AI. So they have an incentive to collect as much data as possible and support lax data-protection laws. On the other hand, consumers in China are demanding tighter protection, while their counterparts in the West, where the Chinese companies are trying to expand their business, have even greater privacy concerns.
另一个重大变化是，中国互联网公司出人意料地出现并成为数据保护的游说者，尽管它们的动机是混杂的。一方面，他们从消费者手中获取的数据正成为一种越来越珍贵的商品。这些公司希望利用这些数据来追求在人工智能领域的全球主导地位。因此，他们有动机收集尽可能多的数据，并支持松散的数据保护法。另一方面，中国的消费者要求更严格的保护，然而在西方，中国公司正试图在那里扩大他们的业务，他们的对手对隐私的担忧更大。
For the past year, companies have been debating how to strike the right balance. Now, it seems, consumer pressure may be winning out. Frank Fan, a data-security expert, argues that recent events will prove a turning point. “In the future,” he says, “data-protection policies will determine whether a company will succeed or not.” Nie Zhengjun, Ant Financial’s chief privacy officer (yes, they have one) claims that Chinese consumers are “no longer content with preventing information from being used for fraudulent purposes…Now they want control in protecting their privacy.”
在过去的一年里，各公司一直在讨论如何找到合适的平衡点。现在看来，消费者的压力可能会最终胜出。数据安全专家弗兰克范认为，最近的事件将成为一个转折点。“在未来”他说，“数据保护政策将决定一家公司是否会成功。聂政军，蚂蚁金融的首席隐私官(是的，他们有一个)声称，中国消费者“不再满足于防止信息被用于欺诈目的……现在他们想要在保护自己的隐私中有控制权。”
The question is how these shifts in consumer attitudes and company behaviour will affect the government, which is gathering vast quantities of personal information without the public’s consent. This includes DNA data taken from millions of people, including all inhabitants of the western province of Xinjiang. The government’s aim is to use the data to help it to strengthen social control.
问题是，消费者态度和公司行为的转变将如何影响政府，政府在未经公众同意的情况下收集了大量的个人信息。这包括数百万人的DNA数据，包括西部省份新疆的所有居民的。政府的目标是利用这些数据来加强社会控制。
In 2017 the government launched an inspection campaign examining the privacy policies of ten internet firms. At least five were found to have improved data protection by making it easier for users to delete personal information. This enabled the government to boast about the security of China’s data-protection laws and claim that it was making personal information safe from criminals.
在2017年，政府发起了一项调查，调查10家互联网公司的隐私政策。至少有5个被发现通过简化用户删除个人信息的方式来改善数据保护。这使中国政府能够夸耀中国的数据保护法的安全性，并声称它正维护个人信息安全，免受犯罪分子攻击。
At the same time, however, the cyber-security law required that copies of all personal data gathered by operators of “critical information infrastructure” in mainland China must be stored there. This has fuelled suspicions that the government wants to be able to gain access to them, either covertly or by putting pressure on data-storage companies. At the end of February, Apple will comply with the new law by handing management of the data of iCloud customers in China to a state-owned company. (The American firm insists that “no back doors will be created into any of our systems” and that it will ensure “strong data privacy”.)
然而，与此同时，网络安全法要求，在中国大陆，所有的运营商收集的“关键信息基础设施”的个人数据的副本必须存放在它那里。这加剧了人们的怀疑，即政府希望能够通过秘密渠道或向数据存储公司施加压力，从而获得对它们的访问权。今年2月底，苹果将遵守新法律，将中国iCloud用户的数据管理交给一家国有企业。(这家美国公司坚持说，“我们的任何系统都不会有后门”，而且它将确保“强大的数据隐私”)。
In the long run, the public’s growing concerns about privacy must be at odds with the government’s efforts to create a new form of surveillance state. But the Communist Party shows no sign of concern: it seems to be able to have its cake and eat it. It is tightening data-protection rules for companies, while making it easier for itself to grab more private information.
从长远来看，公众对隐私的日益担忧，一定与政府创造一种新型监控状态的努力背道而驰。但共产党没有表现出任何担忧:它似乎能拥有并吃掉它的蛋糕。它正在收紧对公司的数据保护规则，同时也让自己更容易获取更多的私人信息。
This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Public pushback"
defraud vt. 欺骗 defraud sb of sth eg. She defrauded her employers of thousands of pounds.
painstaking: adj. 艰苦的；勤勉的；小心的 n. 辛苦；勤勉
die of: 因……死，死于 eg.They died of thirst or starvation.
scammer: n. 调情的人；骗子
be sentenced to: 被判处
have a reputation for: vt. 出名因（因…而著称）；有…的好名声
default setting: 默认设置
mobile-money: 移动支付, 移动钱包
credit-score: 信用评分
hear a case: 审理案件
go rival: 疯狂传播, 像病毒般扩散
snoop: vt/vi. 窥察，窥探 n. 私家侦探，到处窥视；爱管闲事的人 eg. I caught him snooping around in my office.
concede: vt. 承认；退让；给予，容许
connotation: n. 内涵；含蓄；暗示，隐含意义；储蓄的东西（词、语等）
taboo: adj. 禁忌的；忌讳的 n. 禁忌；禁止 n. 禁忌；禁止
count as: 视为；算是；看成
take effect: 生效；起作用
scoop up 用铲子取；兜接，舀上来
in pursuit of: 寻求，追求
win out: 最后获得成功
turning point: 转折点
covert: n. 隐藏处；树丛；蔽覆羽翮基部的羽毛 adj. 隐蔽的；隐密的；偷偷摸摸的；在丈夫保护下的
at odds with 与…争执，意见不一致；与…不和；差异
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