Description
Over the past decade, both China and the European Union (EU) have emerged as increasingly significant actors in transnational data governance. The existing debate tends to view the EU as a nascent regulatory power data governance by leveraging the “Brussels Effect” which refers to the global influence of the EU’s regulatory policies resulting from the union’s externalisation of its laws and regulations through market mechanisms. To the contrary, the discussions on China’s increasing capability of shaping transnational data governance have been revolved around the concept of “Beijing Effect”. It is argued that contrary to the EU’s regulatory approach, China has expanded its sphere of influence through the provision of digital infrastructural ordering in developing countries. Building on the existing debate, this proposed research argues that these scholarly views have overplayed the differences between the “Beijing Effect” and the “Brussels Effect” and downplayed their similarities. Whilst there is an important difference in the regulatory approaches that the EU and China have adopted, both actors have utilised similar instruments to expand their influence in data governance beyond their borders. These instruments include proactive engagement with the key standard-setting organisations as well as efforts to create a sophisticated and complex legal domestic data governance framework which creates spill-over effects for other actors.
