Calls for laws to strengthen Net security

China's legislators and political advisors called for laws on information security during the two sessions to strengthen regulation on the Internet.

Wu Xiaoling, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), proposed that China should accelerate the process to set up a law on personal information safety, which would regulate and overlook information collection online, reported the Xinhua News Agency.

Zhong Tianhua, another NPC deputy who also supported the proposal, noted that government bodies and other public institutions should be held responsible for protecting personal information. He also called for coordination and cooperation between different sectors.

China had over 600 million Net users by the end of 2013 and 438 million of them had their personal information threatened last year. Leaks of private information caused losses valued at over 19 billion yuan ($3.09 billion), according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

The Committee of the Communist Youth League of China also proposed a law to protect minors by strengthening supervision on the online community, reported the Legal Daily.

More than 40 percent of the Internet users in China are juvenile, said the newspaper.

China established a central Internet security and informatization leading group in February, with President Xi Jinping as its leader. The group is designed to lead and coordinate work among different sectors, as well as draft national strategies, development plans and major policies in this field.