The Spatial Expansion of China’s Digital Sovereignty: Extraterritoriality and Geopolitics

Abstract

While China’s approach of re-territorializing the cyberspace is well known, this chapter argues that there is an emerging tendency of China expanding its regulatory power beyond territorial borders, which indicates a more spatially expansive notion of China’s digital sovereignty. This chapter examines this shift from territoriality to extraterritoriality in the conception and practice of China’s digital sovereignty by focusing on three recent regulatory initiatives, that is, the Personal Information Protection Law, the Data Security Law, and the order by the Ministry of Commerce on blocking unjustified extraterritorial application of foreign legislation and measures. From these initiatives, the chapter identifies two main approaches of broadening the spatial dimension of China’s digital sovereignty and argues that they reflect how the notion of digital sovereignty is developed to incorporate China’s changing geostrategic interests. This adaptation of China’s digital sovereignty can be compared to practices of the EU and the US to observe both contrasting trends and important regulatory emulations. The trend toward extraterritoriality, while conditioned by multiple internal and external factors, is likely to face important conceptual and practical challenges.