On July 9, 2021, the sixteenth keynote speech of the "Fudan Transnational Corporations and Law Forum" and the final episode of the third series "TNCs and Information Security" was held successfully online. Associate Professor WANG Yue of Xi'an Jiaotong University School of Law delivered the speech titled "Legislative Progress in Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP) and TNCs' Compliance Responses."

Professor WANG began the speech with a brief introduction of the basic scope of CIIP legislation and recent progress therein. After skimming through major state practices on CIIP legislation and the fundamental consensus among these countries, Professor WANG defined the scope of recognizing a CII. She further pointed out that the key difficulties in CIIP lie in the well-recognized fact that there is a lack of legal certainty regarding the borders of CIIP. Later, Professor Wang explained the legislative purposes of China's Cybersecurity Law and illustrated the corresponding fundamental obligations of various CII operators under this law. Among them, TNCs, as direct contactors of a country's information security, have to cautiously deal with their rights and obligations and balance differing interests in transboundary compliance. Lastly, after summarizing the compliance difficulties of TNCs in CIIP, Professor WANG concluded the speech with three suggestions for TNCs. First, CII operators should endeavor to strictly comply with CIIP laws and regulations of different jurisdictions to maintain the continuous functioning of CII. Second, CII operators should cautiously address the national security concerns of countries. Third, CII operators may build trust through public-private cooperation.

At the commenting session, MA Ji, Senior Lecturer of Peking University School of Transnational Law and Professor ZHAO Lili, Associate Dean of College of Humanity and Law, Shandong University of Science and Technology, elaborated on the possibilities of intensified tension in public-private partnership regarding CIIP and the TNCs' paths of CIIP compliance.

The speech concluded this semester's events of the "Fudan TNCs and Law Forum." We are grateful for all the help and support received and will resume the events in mid-September when the 2021-2022 fall semester starts.