Right to Data Access in the Digital Era: The Case of China

Abstract

This chapter examines the academic debate on access to digital data in China and the Chinese state’s policy on data, demonstrating the lack of consideration of epistemic rights in regulating access to digital data in China and the interplay of global tendencies and local particularities. This chapter makes the following main points. First, the concept of epistemic rights has not drawn the attention of Chinese academics, while the closely related concept of the right to information is approached from a legal perspective, one that stresses the consumer’s right to obtain public information and digital platforms’ data rights. Second, the right to data access has not been treated as an independent right but as part of the debate on data property rights and the right to information. Third, in the government’s data strategy policy, data is defined as a new factor of production that is key for national economic development (besides land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship). Finally, the lack of attention to epistemic rights and an overly narrow definition of data has undermined alternative explorations of the implications of the public good nature of data. Even though public data is accessible conditionally, the equality of non-public data access has not being a recognised principle in both academic research and the policymaking agenda.