Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation ("SAMR") and the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission have jointly distributed the Announcement on Initiating the Application Safety Certification (the "Announcement").
The Announcement reads that: 1. Activities in relation to application (App) safety certification shall be conducted in line with the Implementing Rules for Safety Certification of Mobile Internet Applications (App) (the "Rules"); 2. the certification agency qualified to conduct the App safety certification is the China Cybersecurity Review Technology and Certification Center, and the testing agencies will be determined by the certification agency according to needs of the certification business and their technical capacity; 3. The certification agency and testing agencies shall, in accordance with applicable provisions, carry out activities in relation to certification and tests in an objective and fair fashion, and bear responsibilities for the results; 4. The State encourages App operators to voluntarily handle and pass the App safety certification and inspires search engines and App stores to clearly identify and first recommend those certified Apps. According to the Rules, the App safety certification process involves the technical verification, the on-the-spot inspections and the post-certification surveillance. An App operator is disallowed to apply for the certification if it falls under any of given circumstances, including "having a serious information security accident in the past 12 months".