Hong Kong has a fascinating history. On January 25, 1841, a British naval party landed and raised the British flag on the northern shore of Hong Kong, a small island located in the Pearl River Delta in southern China. The next day, the commander of the British expeditionary force took formal possession of the island in the name of the British Crown (Carroll, JM, (2007) A Concise History of Hong Kong Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1.). Except for three and a half years during World War II when Hong Kong was part of the short-lived Japanese Empire, the British occupation would last until midnight on July 1, 1997, whereby Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.
The data protection laws of Hong Kong are significantly different to that of the other data laws examined in this book. Data protection in Hong Kong began in 1995, with the implementation of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance. It was the first comprehensive data protection law in the region with reference to the OECD Privacy Guidelines 1980 and the draft EU Data Protection Directive 1995. Arguably, the implementation of data protection law was necessary in order to discharge Hong Kong’s obligations for human rights and retain their status as an international trading centre. Thus, for Hong Kong one of their key objectives is to retain their international business status as a financial and services hub. Interestingly, the first laws came into effect 2 years before the handover of the territory from the former rule of the United Kingdom back to China.
This Chapter begins by highlighting how Hong Kong was ruled by the British before being handed back to the China in 1997. This former British rule had a profound influence on the legal framework of Hong Kong. The current day data protection laws of Hong Kong reflect the framework set out by the OECD and the EU. However, the data protection laws of Hong Kong do significantly differ from other states in the Asia region. Going forward the question will be whether the data protection laws of Hong Kong remain as they are, or, move closer to the recently established laws of China. This Chapter discusses Definition of Personal Data, Public and Private, Transfer Matching and Transfer of Personal Data, Controller [Data User], Erasing Personal Data [Right to Be Forgotten], Data User Returns and Register of Data Users, Access and Correction of Personal Data, Consent and Direct Marketing, Privacy Commissioner, Enforcement and Security [Cyber].
