Looking at China's Facebook (RenRen) through the Lens of European Data Protection Principles

Social networking systems (SNS) are emerging as a cultural phenomenon in China and a Chinese SNS industry is rapidly developing. While greatly enriching their users' lives, these systems bring issues of private law data protection to the fore. The paper tests the data protection quality of RenRen (China's Facebook), by investigating how RenRen with its privacy arrangements of Chinese heritage would be understood in Europe anno 2013. The research method mainly consists in processing specific information on RenRen's compliance with EU data protection principles as well as observing privacy policies issued by RenRen. As presented in the conclusion section, the authors demonstrate that the differences between Chinese and EU private law data protection practices could well be converging as a result of the trend towards informational globalization, but that this trend is not yet sufficiently understood. As such this paper should be of interest to a broad readership including those interested in informational privacy, social networking and Chinese data protection law.