Escort the construction of a cyber power with the power of the rule of law

Author: Wang Yijue (Assistant Professor, Beijing Jiaotong University Law School)

The year 2024 is an important node in the history of the development of the Internet in the mainland, and 30 years ago, the mainland fully connected to the Internet and promulgated the first administrative regulations related to the Internet, thus opening the prelude to the construction of the rule of law on the Internet. Since then, the mainland has rapidly undergone iterations from portal Internet, mobile Internet to intelligent Internet. In February 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward for the first time the strategic goal of "striving to build the mainland into a cyber power" at the first meeting of the Central Leading Group for Cyber Security and Informatization, emphasizing that "there is no national security without cybersecurity, and there is no modernization without informatization". Over the past decade, the construction of the rule of law on the Internet has been continuously promoted, providing a solid legal guarantee for the construction of a cyber power and a strong momentum for high-quality economic and social development. On this occasion, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) took the lead in compiling the "Thirty Years of China's Internet Rule of Law", which not only provides a panoramic perspective for reviewing and summarizing the construction of the Internet rule of law in mainland China, but also provides a systematic reference for understanding and condensing the way of Internet governance with Chinese characteristics. The report not only echoes the global consensus on the use of the concept of the rule of law, the rule of law thinking and the means of the rule of law to promote Internet development and governance, but also contributes Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to global Internet governance from the perspective of institutional construction.

The value of people-centered and law-based governance of the network

As an important part of comprehensively governing the country according to law and building a cyber power, the rule of law is first of all an inherent requirement for protecting the rights and interests of citizens, an inevitable choice for purifying the network ecology, and an important embodiment of the full implementation of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law and adherence to the people-centered value concept. In the new era, the construction of online rule of law thoroughly implements Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law and General Secretary Xi Jinping's important thought on building a strong cyber country, giving full play to its role in consolidating the fundamentals, stabilizing expectations, and benefiting the long-term, and continuously consolidating the foundation of the rule of law for high-quality economic and social development. Specifically, the rule of law in cyberspace should "consolidate the foundation", create good laws with the will of the people, consolidate the legal foundation of cyberspace, and build "four beams and eight pillars" for the construction of a cyber power; The online rule of law should be "beneficial to the long-term", prevent and cure before it sprouts, forward-looking to respond to the risks brought about by new Internet technologies, new applications, new business formats, and new models, and actively respond to the people's new needs for a better digital life; The rule of law on the Internet should "stabilize expectations", fully control, predict, and govern the complexity and uncertainty of illegal and criminal activities on the Internet, and delineate the boundaries and scales of the behavior of entities participating in the network through the rule of law, so as to form a stable operating mechanism for an intelligent society.

On the one hand, the stability of the law is realized through "consolidating the fundamentals", and the people-centered concept of rule of law is integrated into the network legal system with the constitution as the foundation, laws and regulations as the basis, traditional legislation as the foundation, and special network legislation as the backbone, and is implemented in all links and the whole process of the comprehensive governance system of legislation, law enforcement, justice, law-abiding, and supervision; On the other hand, it is to adapt the law to the Internet era through "long-term benefits", respond to major social concerns in a timely manner, and include harmful behaviors related to people's livelihood and well-being into the scope of regulation in a timely manner, so as to achieve re-stabilization through reform. This people-oriented core stance makes the construction of the rule of law in the mainland have the value shaping and normative logic of a community with a shared future for mankind, and shows the stable expectation function of the network governance model with Chinese characteristics and the advantages of concepts and paradigms, which is conducive to promoting the construction of a community with a shared future in cyberspace.

Respond to the multi-faceted exploration of information civilization and rule the Internet according to law

On the one hand, the information revolution has given birth to a digital economy with information and data as resources and network platforms as carriers, which has led to the emergence of more and more new legal interests and emerging rights in new economic and social relations. On the other hand, it has intensified the collision and integration between tradition, modernity and postmodernity, and provided a major opportunity for shaping the autonomy of the mainland's cyber rule of law. In the current information age, all kinds of non-traditional security risks pervade many fields such as networks, data, and artificial intelligence, and have many characteristics that are different from traditional illegal and criminal activities: First, the field is ubiquitous, and people's production and life have been broadened from the real physical world to the virtual network world, and illegal and criminal activities have also presented a vertical and horizontal situation of combining virtual and real, colluding upstream and downstream, and intersecting inside and outside the domain. The second is the anonymization of the subject, in which the perpetrators in the online context are non-contact, and based on anonymous contact and functional differentiation, they form an industrialized, chained, and clustered form of criminal cooperation, which is different from traditional joint crimes. The third is the complexity of behaviors, not only the emergence of new harmful behaviors, but also the spatiotemporal asynchronicity between harmful behaviors and harmful outcomes is not uncommon. Fourth, the harm is diffuse, and some non-material harms are difficult to quantify, such as online violence not only infringes on the rights and interests of the parties, but also disrupts the online order, destroys the online ecology, and seriously affects the public's sense of security; Some hidden damages are difficult to detect, such as the quantification of transaction data and the globalization of the scope of activities using digital currency for cross-border money laundering, which brings challenges to anti-money laundering supervision; Some diffuse damage is difficult to predict, such as the cross-border flow of data, which has both the risk of infringing on personal privacy and the hidden danger of endangering national security.

In the face of various risks caused by the development of information technology, it is necessary to pay attention to the lack of institutions and imbalances in treatment reflected in specific problems, and also to explore the relationship between the rule of law and technology at the abstract level. In terms of abstract dimension, the identification of the relationship between the rule of law and science and technology has universal significance, and its internal principles are helpful for understanding and solving specific problems. The essence of the system concept lies in the overall planning, strategic layout and overall advancement. The establishment of the rule of law in the mainland has always adhered to systematic advancement, comprehensively grasping the relationship between the rule of law and science and technology, emphasizing the coordination between development and security, freedom and order, openness and autonomy, and management and services in practice, taking into account special actions and normalized governance, and following the principle of punishment, prevention first, and governance, so as to ensure the healthy development of the digital economy. At the concrete level, in response to the continuous renovation of the phenomenon of online violations and crimes, the mainland has created a diversified and three-dimensional governance system of "state-society-individual" while promoting scientific legislation, strict law enforcement, fair justice, and law-abiding by the whole people. For example, in July last year, the mainland took the lead in formulating the Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative AI Services, after which the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) completed the filing of generative AI services such as Wenxin Yiyan and Tsinghua Zhipu, and promoted the innovation and development of technology and applications by deepening top-level design, strengthening industry governance, and implementing individual rights and responsibilities.

Adhere to the institutional strategy of upholding integrity and innovation, and governing the network according to law

Today, the mainland has become one of the world's trends in digital development, and has promoted all-round innovation in the concepts, methods, and models of online rule of law by refining propositions and constructing systems that are in line with the development of the times based on its own development reality. Specifically: First, the concept is reshaped. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the mainland has been guided by the overall national security concept, continuously improved the network security work mechanism, enhanced the network security guarantee capacity, and significantly enhanced the network security awareness and protection capacity of the whole society.

The second is to reconstruct the method. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized that legislation in key areas, emerging fields, and foreign-related fields should be strengthened, and domestic and foreign-related rule of law should be promoted in a coordinated manner, so as to promote development and ensure good governance with good laws. Therefore, it is necessary to take the Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China, the Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China, the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China, and the Anti-Telecommunication Network Fraud Law of the People's Republic of China as the guidance to form a systematic mechanism with integrated effects, including pre-prevention, in-process intervention, and post-event accountability.

The third is model reconstruction. The mainland empowers the traditional judicial model with information technology, and actively promotes the in-depth integration of modern technologies such as big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain in the fields of litigation services, trial enforcement, and judicial management. In the exploration of smart justice, resolve new types of online disputes in accordance with law, strengthen the force of punishment for cybercrimes, and effectively protect the rights and interests of online entities. For cybercrime cases involving a large number of people and involving a wide range of areas, follow categorical and hierarchical handling, implement the criminal policy of blending leniency and severity, and safeguard fairness and justice in cyberspace. In particular, the establishment and development of Internet courts has demonstrated the "Chinese wisdom" of Internet judicial governance, and has become an important window for the international community to understand the construction of the Internet rule of law in mainland China.

Good law and good governance escort. Practice has fully proved that the mainland has made historic achievements and achieved leapfrog development in the construction of the rule of law on the Internet, forming a way of governing the Internet with Chinese characteristics. Facing the future, on the new journey of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way, we will inevitably face some unprecedented risks and challenges. The mainland will always adhere to the concept of comprehensively governing the country according to law, escort the construction of a cyber power with the power of the rule of law, and provide a solid legal guarantee for the high-quality development of digital China.

Source: Guangming Network