China put two recommendatory national standards for data assets into effect on 1 September. They give organizations a common code for 15 kinds of data and a common workflow for recording, changing and removing an asset record. They do not give those records a common economic meaning.
That distinction matters because the standards are easy to read as a market-making event. They are better understood as accounting infrastructure. A uniform ledger can reduce the cost of checking what a company says it controls. It cannot make two data assets comparable when their rights, useful lives and expected cash flows remain different.
The standards are GB/T 47949-2026 for classification and GB/T 47950-2026 for registration. Both were issued on 2 July and are recommendatory, not mandatory. The 2025 identifiers used in some early summaries are wrong.
A common catalogue is not a common price
The classification standard starts with three technical forms: structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. It then divides them into 15 subcategories. Database tables and spreadsheets sit under structured data. Logs sit under semi-structured data. Text, images, audio, video, spatial relationships and multimodal AI training data sit under unstructured data.
That taxonomy is useful. A company can assign a structured code instead of describing every dataset from scratch. Auditors and regulators get a more consistent inventory. The State Administration for Market Regulation’s implementation notice says the registration standard provides a lifecycle process for initial registration, changes and deregistration. It sets requirements for asset-ledger registration and accounting-book registration. That split keeps management records and financial statements distinct.
The boundary is equally important. The classification text says it does not change the definitions or classifications used by existing accounting standards. The registration standard records data assets that an organization has already confirmed. A ledger entry is the output of a recognition decision, not a substitute for one.
China has standardized the container. It has not standardized the claim inside it.
The balance-sheet gate did not move
China’s interim accounting provisions for enterprise data resources, effective since January 2024, still control recognition. Data held for sale in ordinary business can be inventory if it meets the existing definition and recognition tests. Data used by the business can be an intangible asset under the same logic. Internally generated spending enters development expenditure only when it passes the capitalization conditions for intangible assets. Research spending remains an expense.
The result is narrower than the phrase “data asset” suggests. A legally controlled dataset expected to generate benefits can still remain off the balance sheet if it fails a recognition test. The new standards do not create ownership, prove control or restore costs that were previously expensed.
Property rights also sit in a separate layer. China’s policy framework splits data rights into rights to hold data, use and process it, and operate it. A National Data Administration explanation says rights confirmation answers who can exercise which rights, while accounting recognition asks whether the reporting entity controls an economic resource. Registration can supply evidence for that analysis. It does not settle it automatically.
The first filing still speaks in cost
The first public company filing located after the standards took effect shows how little the measurement layer changed. In a prospectus filed on 3 September, data-services company Daily Interaction reported data resources with a net carrying amount of RMB78.33 million as of 30 June. The company classified the entire reported balance as internally developed.
The company’s filing explains the measurement basis. It capitalizes qualifying personnel and data-centre costs, then uses accelerated amortization over five years. Capitalization increased pre-tax profit by RMB43.69 million in 2024, RMB28.20 million in 2025 and RMB6.44 million in the first half of 2026. Those figures describe accounting cost allocation. They are not an independent appraisal of what a buyer would pay.
The nearest public comparator makes the problem visible. Tianjin TEDA Resources Recycling Group reported a purchased data resource with a gross cost of RMB3.80 million and a net carrying amount of RMB3.10 million at 30 June in its half-year report filed on 22 August. One balance is accumulated internal development cost. The other begins with a purchase price. Neither is a current market value, and their ratio says little about the relative earning power of the underlying data.
No post-implementation company filing, public register entry or disclosed transaction located for this review paired a monetary value with enough method and input detail to reproduce it. Public registries can name an asset and show a certificate number. That improves provenance. It does not reveal whether a quoted value came from replacement cost, comparable trades or discounted income.
China’s appraisal framework already permits cost, market and income approaches. The Ministry of Finance describes those as method families whose use depends on the asset and appraisal purpose. Choice remains necessary because data is not depleted like oil and is not interchangeable like a listed share. Its value can rise when combined with another dataset, fall when consent expires, or collapse when a model stops using it.
Comparability is the next test
The September standards can still improve finance. A stable classification code and lifecycle record should make it easier to trace where a claimed asset came from, when it changed and why it left the ledger. That is meaningful control infrastructure.
The next test is disclosure. A useful filing or transaction needs to identify the rights being transferred, the data’s scope and freshness, the recognition basis, the valuation method, the material assumptions and the final price. Repetition across issuers would then create benchmarks. Without those fields, uniform records will remain uniform only on paper.
China now has a better grammar for data assets. A market will require numbers that mean the same thing.
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