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Phoebe Zhang

A controversial plan by police in a northern Chinese city to build a crime-fighting tool using blood samples from men has sparked a debate over privacy rights.
Police in Xilinhot in Inner Mongolia announced last month that they would start collecting DNA samples to update a data bank for identification information used for such items as ID cards and passports, according to a report by China Newsweek magazine.
The police also said at the time that the samples would help in “preventing elderly and children getting lost”, and offered reassurances that personal information and biological samples would be “kept strictly confidential”, according to the September 23 report.
The South China Morning Post could not find the original statement on the police agency’s website or its social media account.
In follow-up interviews last month, a police officer told China Newsweek that the sample collection was entirely voluntary and there would be no consequences for those who refused. The samples would help to construct a local Y-chromosome bank, the report said.
Police in Xilinhot did not respond to phone calls from the Post.
The earliest push for a “Y bank” in China can be traced to 2007 – launched by police in Zhengzhou, in central China’s Henan province.
Police in at least 18 provinces have since issued sample collection statements for their own Y banks, or mentioned it in open records, according to a tally by Caixin magazine published this week.
A technique known as Y-STR family screening uses the DNA information to narrow down potential suspects in police investigations. It works because all males in the same family have similar genetic markers called “short tandem repeats” on their Y chromosome. This allows police to identify a suspect’s family, then use other methods to pinpoint the specific individual.
The technology has helped to crack many cases, including the infamous Baiyin serial killings, where 11 women were murdered between 1988 and 2002 in the city in the northwestern province of Gansu.
However, the move by authorities in Xilinhot to collect blood samples has triggered debate about whether it is justified. A commentary last month in Nanfang Daily, based in southern Guangdong province, said there had been little public communication from police about the initiative, including how the DNA information would be stored, used and discarded.


Tian Fang, a law professor at Nanjing University, told South Reviews, a magazine based in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, that the technology was only capable of analysing non-coding DNA, which would not constitute an invasion of privacy.
Non-coding DNA contains no information about a person’s heredity, such as eye colour or blood type.
But other experts said there could be risks in other links. Chen Xuequan, a law professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told Caixin that without legal assurances, problems could surface.
“After the samples are collected, who is in charge of analysing? After analysis, what will they do with it? If they keep the samples, they can analyse anytime and even get more private information out of it,” he said.
An anti-terrorism law written in 2015 is the only current legislation to refer to the collection of specific biological information – blood, urine, fingerprints and iris images. The law took effect on January 1, 2016.
Other Chinese laws only refer to “personal information” and require that its collection be based on consent.
Lawyers have long called for a stronger legal framework over the collection of personal information. Lao Dongyan, a criminal law expert at Tsinghua University, wrote in 2020 that facial recognition technology could be at risk from data leaks and from abuse by authorities.


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Initiative by Inner Mongolia law enforcement to collect male blood samples exposes gaps in legal safeguards


Initiative by Inner Mongolia law enforcement to collect male blood samples exposes gaps in legal safeguards.


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Why a police plan for a DNA data bank in China has sparked privacy worries

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Initiative by Inner Mongolia law enforcement to collect male blood samples exposes gaps in legal safeguards

Initiative by Inner Mongolia law enforcement to collect male blood samples exposes gaps in legal safeguards