  Privacy in apps is a topic of widespread interest because many apps collect
and share large amounts of highly sensitive information. In response, China
introduced a range of new data protection laws over recent years, notably the
Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) in 2021. So far, there exists
limited research on the impacts of these new laws on apps' privacy practices.
To address this gap, this paper analyses data collection in pairs of 634
Chinese iOS apps, one version from early 2020 and one from late 2021. Our work
finds that many more apps now implement consent. Yet, those end-users that
decline consent will often be forced to exit the app. Fewer apps now collect
data without consent but many still integrate tracking libraries. We see our
findings as characteristic of a first iteration at Chinese data regulation with
room for improvement.

Computers and Society;Cryptography and Security