2023.Feb.20

REPORTS

Report on Lecture by Dr. Aynne Kokas “Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty”

On August 8, 2022, B‘AI Global Forum invited Dr. Aynne Kokas, who is associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and 2018 Abe Fellow, and also one of the 2018 Abe Fellows. Her research examines U.S.-China relations in terms of media and technology and she gave a lecture based on her latest book “Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty.” (Oxford University Press, October 2022)

She argues that Silicon Valley’s exploitative data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. In her book, she examines how consumer data functions as a mechanism for structuring global power accumulation for nation-states and proposes the concept data trafficking to explain its phenomena. She defines it as an extractive process that exploits corporate data to third parties with limited user consent or acknowledgement. It occurs through cross-border enmeshment between the U.S. and China, undergirded by corporate practices, national laws, and consumer exploitation.

In contrast, it is not regarded as data trafficking that the data is transferred under a well-regulated environment with full user consent. According to her, Japan’s regulatory environment provides an excellent example of stable data flows with Europe. In the U.S. unprecedented rapid growth in the tech sector outpaced governmental regulation and oversight, creating an alternative bubble of self-regulating rules in the U.S. The lack of systemic regulation in the U.S led to the rise of “surveillance capitalism,” a business model run on user data collection, and improper data regulations makes everyone worse off.

On the other hand, China has taken a series of steps to claim its data and cyber sovereignty by defining and protecting its digital borders. China’s broad definition of “data” gives it the legal authority over all critical data, ranging from national security data audits to civil and criminal penalties to extraterritorial environment of Chinese government laws. Therefore, China’s system gives it the legitimate power to extensively control/monitor data generated by all operators domestically and internationally through all overing legislation and harsh punishments.

From the geo-political perspective, it is obvious that current Japan needs to be “balancing” between U.S. and China, however, we might have discussed such difficult situation mainly focusing on national security while neglecting human dignity. Her quoting word trafficking, which evokes serious human rights violations like slave trade or forced prostitution, suggests us the way to create the world in the digital era, where the slogan of the SDGs “leave no one behind” is realized.