Abstract: The Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China does not clarify the relationship between privacy and personal information in the application of the law of private information, leading to the judicial dilemma that although courts follow a grafting path from unitary protection to  dual distinction in adjudications, they fail to break away from the traditional priori distribution paradigm in defining private information. Be it “private verse public” situational interpretation or “private verse non-private” content interpretation, the definition of private information is still confined to subjective prejudgment and thus a circular definition, which reflects the failure of traditional privacy theories. The theoretical evolution and legal practice of the adjustment of information privacy rights in the United States show that mainstream views have shifted to a more flexible contextual integrity theory, preferring a dynamic definition, which can better adapt to the value needs of information flow. In view of this, Chinese law should take three steps to clarify the norms of information flow: determining the relationship between information participants, extracting common interests according to the context, and limiting the reasonable scope of information dissemination. With the three steps combined with ethical legality rules that rectify the existing norms, a substantial clarification of the connotation of private information is to be achieved.

Key words: Key words： privacy right, private information, judicial dilemma, context integrity theory, norms of information flow