China’s Data Strategies: institutionalisation, activation and layering

Whereas on paper China has many data strategies in policies and laws, this chapter concerns China’s data strategies in practice. Drawing from theories of institutional law and economics, the chapter conceptualises China’s data strategies as ‘institutionalisation’, ‘activation’ and ‘layering’. It argues that these three types of strategies deal with China’s three real data predicaments: firstly, security and compliance concerns under concentrated corporate (and state) data power; secondly, the fragmentation of data access and use; and thirdly, the lack of valuable data use and long-term scaling. The chapter combines doctrinal analysis with semi-structured interviews conducted in China between 2020/12 and 2021/4. (1) First, the chapter uses ‘institutionalisation’ to describe the state’s adoption of formal institutions to co-produce the economy by inducing informal knowledge exchange with private actors. This strategy addresses data harms / risks and stabilises common knowledge in the epistemic communities of data governance, which can potentially lead to a soft ‘Beijing Effect’. Evidence appeared intensively in China in summer 2021, including the cyber / data security review after DiDi’s initial public offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange, the completion of China’s data protection regime by passing the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) featuring ‘gatekeeper’ and managerial liabilities, and antitrust practices that restrain data power and facilitate interoperability. (2) Second, the state creates flexible legal and policy spaces for the practical experimentations of ‘activating’ data transaction, sharing, and use. Evidence of such activation strategy is drawn from the struggle between Ant Group and the Central Bank over personal credit information, the competing approaches to data property between Shenzhen and Beijing, and the case of ‘Party manages data’ in Tianjin. (3) Third, in order to achieve valuable public data applications, the state adopts the strategy of ‘layering’ that is to build long-term data habitat / ecosystems with in-depth understanding of the institutional contexts. Evidence includes practices in Smart Court and social / financial credit systems, complemented by other secondary sources from Huawei, Alibaba and research institutes. In conclusion, China’s data strategies—institutionalisation, activation and layering—help the state co-produce the digital economy, contest data property, and co-evolve with emerging technologies under path-dependency.