The 2018 Annual Forum of the Research Alliance for Data Governance and Cyber Security (DGCS-Alliance) was held in Beijing on June 5. The forum, held only ten days after the coming into force of EU General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR), was jointly sponsored by DGCS-Alliance and Nandu Personal Information Security Research Center and attended by experts and scholars from China, Europe, US, Japan and South Korea. The forum consisted of five panels, in which the participants gave keynote speeches and carried out heated debates on various issues around the following five themes: Ways of Protecting Personal Information; Cross-border Flows of Personal Information; Directional News Push and Regulation; Data Management; and Data Sovereignty.

Professor Zhou Huanhua, Assistant Director of CASS Law Institute, Executive Vice Chairman of Cyberspace and Information Law Research Committee of China Law Society, Director of CASS Center for Cultural Law Studies, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cyber and Information Law, attended the forum and gave a keynote speech entitled “Exploring approaches to incentive compatible personal data governance: Legislative Direction of China's Personal Information Protection Law” at the first panel of the forum. In the speech, he pointed out that GDPR aims at striking a balance between the development of digital economy and the protection of personal data. Its core can be summarized as “incentives and compatibility”, namely to give enterprises no less incentives for the protection of data then that for the use of data, so as to ensure the compliance the relevant laws and regulations by enterprises.GDPR also emphasizes the principle of transparency and strives to give full play to the initiatives of enterprises for participating in the data governance, so as to make data protection anintegral part of corporate mechanism.