As we reported then, China's most powerful legislative body, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, passed the Personal Information Protection Law that will go into effect on Nov.1.  The move sent tech stocks plunging and leaving investors bewildered over the intensity of Beijing's regulatory crackdown that has slammed countless sectors. 

It turns out that when it comes to control over data, Beijing is nowhere near done and late on Friday Reuters reported that as part of Beijing's unprecedented scrutiny of private sector firms, Chinese regulators are considering pressing data-rich companies "to hand over management and supervision of their data to third-party firms" if they want to list in the U.S.

The regulators believe bringing in third-party information security firms - ideally state-backed - to manage and monitor IPO hopefuls' data could effectively limit their ability to transfer Chinese onshore data overseas. That, Reuters notes, would help ease Beijing's growing concerns that "a foreign listing might force such Chinese companies to hand over some of their data to foreign entities and undermine national security" a increasingly sensitive topic for public Chinese firms such as Didi whose stock price plunged amid an ongoing feud with Beijing over who gets to control the company's data trove.