Fable
The escort agency had a written contract and a travel roster
A silk merchant in Jiangnan had a batch of tribute goods to escort to the capital and found the largest escort agency in town, Sihai. The two sides signed a contract specifying the escort route, start and end times, value of the goods, compensation clauses for loss, and responsibility handovers at each station along the way. This contract was the legal basis for their cooperation—whoever had an incident paid, and the boundaries were drawn clearly.
The escort agency's route had to pass through three provinces and seven prefectures. The journey was too long, so Four Seas Escort Agency itself handled only the first leg, from Suzhou and Hangzhou to Xuzhou, and subcontracted the latter two legs to Faithful Escort Agency and Dragon Gate Escort Agency respectively. Subcontracting required the merchant's consent, and the contract included a sheet listing the names of Faithful Escort Agency and Dragon Gate Escort Agency, the sections they were responsible for and the escort procedures. The merchant signed the sheet, authorizing the subcontracting.
When they reached Xuzhou, heavy rain fell, and Xinyi Escort Agency stored the goods at a relay station along the way, temporarily hiring a porter named Chen Bao to move the goods into storage. While storing them, Chen Bao dropped a box of tribute goods and damaged the brocade. When tracing the problem, the Shangzhou prefectural office asked the merchant: who was the party bearing losses written in the contract? The merchant said Sihai Escort Agency. The prefectural office asked again: was Chen Bao written in the contract? The merchant searched for a long time; Xinyi Escort Agency was on the list, but Chen Bao was not.
The prefecture court ruled that the merchant could only claim against Four Seas Escort Agency, but Four Seas argued the loss occurred on Trust & Righteousness Escort Agency's route, and Trust & Righteousness said it was the responsibility of temporary porter Chen Bao. With three lines tangled together, the only legal anchor is that contract—the DPA—but the contract itself only defines the controller-processor responsibility relationship and does not exhaustively list every layer of operators beneath the processor.
The merchant later changed the format of the contract: the main contract was still signed only with Four Seas Escort Agency—clearly defining responsibility and breach clauses. But a new appendix was added called "Authorized Processing Chain," listing four levels: Four Seas Escort Agency itself, Xinyi Escort Agency, Longmen Escort Agency, and the fourth level—temporary personnel used by any subcontractor must be reported in advance on the premise that the preceding level bears full responsibility. This appendix is not a replacement for the main contract, but a supplementary list to it.
The magistrate's judicial officer later used this case to explain to peers: the contract is the legal framework between you and your direct contracting party—it defines how data may be processed and who bears ultimate responsibility. The subprocessor list is a factual disclosure of "to whom your direct contracting party has handed off the work." You can require disclosure of all subprocessors, but you cannot treat the subprocessor list as the DPA itself and sign it.
Someone asked the judge: if Four Seas Escort adds a new subprocessor after signing but does not notify the merchant, can the merchant hold Four Seas Escort liable under the contract? The judge said of course—the compensation clause in the contract remains valid, and adding an unauthorized subprocessor constitutes breach of contract. The reason to maintain an accurately updated subprocessor list is that the names on the list are the public record of the fact of an "authorized processing chain."