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During the recent outbreak of coronavirus, the concern about proliferation of misleading information, rumours and myths has caused governments across the world to institute various interventionist steps to stem their flow. Each government has had to balance the dichotomy between freedom of expression and people’s right to be safe from the adverse impact of inaccurate information. Governments across the world have implemented a number of strategies to manage COVID-19 including issuing public advisories, advertising campaigns, holding press conferences and instituting punitive regulations to combat the distribution of false and misleading information. We examine the two most populous countries’ governments’ response to the scourge of fake news during COVID-19. China and India are the most challenging nations to govern in terms of their sheer size and diversity of their population. Each country’s government has taken several steps to minimise the impact of fake news during COVID, within its own political system.

Many cities around the world are increasingly embedding technological infrastructure in urban spaces. These infrastructures aim to collect vast amounts of data from citizens with an apparent purpose of improving public services. This article discusses privacy concerns generated by China's nationwide smart city campaign and further investigates why China's latest Cybersecurity Law is not adequate to address the risks to citizens' privacy. We argue that there is no functional privacy law in China that would apply to most data collected by smart city infrastructure; nor is there any law that would protect any personal data collected under this framework. We therefore propose practical suggestions to better protect citizens' data in China's ongoing smart city campaign.

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