From ＂From scratch＂ to ＂From scratch to Excellence＂ The New Achievements of Cyberspace Governance in China
□ Experts’ Talk on "Network Rule of Law Construction in China in the New Era"
Zhao Jingwu, Special Commentator of Rule of Law Network
After stepping into the network society, cyberspace governance has become a "microcosm" of the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. Looking around the world, governments all over the world have made arrangements in cyberspace. China has also firmly grasped cyberspace as an important strategic resource and the support of social development. In the past few years, it has not only achieved the "from scratch" in the construction of network rule of law, but also completed the "from scratch" in the fields of network legislation, network law enforcement, network justice and network law popularization.
As early as 2015, the General Secretary of the Supreme Leader emphasized at the opening ceremony in world internet conference that it is necessary to "adhere to the rule of law, run the Internet according to law, and surf the Internet according to law, so that the Internet can operate healthily on the track of the rule of law". In practice, China is also continuing to implement the spirit of the important speech of the Supreme Leader General Secretary, laying a solid foundation for the rule of law in cyberspace and standardizing the market order in cyberspace, and has achieved remarkable results.
On March 16th, the white paper "China’s Network Rule of Law Construction in the New Era" issued by the State Council Press Office systematically summarized the achievements of China’s cyberspace governance activities from a macro perspective, highlighting the China wisdom of cyberspace governance.
First, the network rule of law sets the order
On the legislative level, faced with the emerging social governance problems in the digital age, China actively explored the road of rule of law suitable for itself.
Protection of rights is the foundation.The goal of cyberspace governance is to maximize people’s well-being, and the primary task of China’s cyberspace legislation is to protect citizens’ legitimate rights and interests. A series of laws and regulations, such as Civil Code, Criminal Law and Personal Information Protection Law, specifically define the new digital rights enjoyed by Chinese citizens in the digital age. More importantly, these rights are not limited to concepts, but are fully guaranteed by the corresponding obligation system and responsibility identification mechanism. Both citizens’ digital personality rights, citizens’ digital property and network virtual property are protected by laws and regulations. In addition, China always regards the principle of equality as the core of its rights system, and at the same time provides institutional guarantee for eliminating the digital divide for special groups such as minors, the elderly and the disabled.
The digital economy is the focus.Various emerging formats such as platform economy, sharing economy and short video economy have emerged one after another. While activating the vitality of market competition, new unfair competition behaviors have also emerged simultaneously, which are not covered by traditional anti-monopoly law and anti-unfair competition law. In order to ensure the sustainable and healthy development of the digital economy, China has successively promulgated laws and regulations such as the E-commerce Law and the Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Transactions, and revised the anti-monopoly law and the anti-unfair competition law to better adjust the market competition relationship under the digital economy model.
Network security is the bottom line.The innovation and development of digital economy can not be separated from network security. The legal system of network security constructed by China is based on the overall national security concept, from the network security law, data security law to the Regulations on the Security Protection of Key Information Infrastructure and the Measures for the Review of Network Security, all of which reflect that China’s "network security" covers network information system security, network data security, network information content ecological security, network criminal security, network intellectual property security, network transaction security and other components, and has been constructed.
Second, online justice guarantees justice
The realization of fairness and justice can not only stay in written documents, but also let the people really feel the fairness and transparency of the rule of law in cyberspace. China timely adjusted the existing judicial system, combined with the new features and new demands of online disputes, and cooperated to innovate online and offline judicial procedures, so that people can truly feel fairness and justice in judicial services.
Simultaneously update judicial rules and continuously refine judicial procedures.The unique network disputes in the digital age, such as network transaction disputes, telecommunication network fraud, network copyright disputes and personal information rights infringement disputes, have challenged the trial ability of China courts. In order to effectively protect all kinds of new digital rights, based on the basic demands of the parties, China has refined the rules of electronic data evidence, online mediation and online litigation of people’s courts, and gradually established efficient online judicial rules that are compatible with online disputes. At the same time, through the unification of the rules of adjudication and the criteria for determining the boundary of behavior, it will provide a more transparent and safe judicial environment for the development of China’s digital economy.
Innovatively explore the trial mechanism and deepen the promotion of technical empowerment.In line with the development trend of the digital age, China has successively established Internet courts in Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou to explore the application scenarios of digital information technology in the judicial field and form a new Internet trial mechanism with regional characteristics. Blockchain and artificial intelligence not only cause problems in cyberspace governance, but also provide new trial tools for judicial organs. Innovative concepts such as case push, smart court and smart justice have been put forward and landed one after another, which have improved the efficiency of judicial trial in China, and also demonstrated the possibility and superiority of technology empowerment, forming an Internet judicial model unique to China.
Strictly implement law enforcement standards and vigorously punish cyber crimes.In the network society, the abuse of information technology often induces a series of social problems and alienates traditional criminal acts. In order to curb the damage of telecommunication network fraud to social order and protect the legitimate rights and interests of special groups, China resolutely cracked down on all kinds of network crimes. In the law enforcement activities such as "Clean Net Action" and "Clear and Clear Special Action" that have been carried out for many years, China has cut off the network black and gray industrial chain with new governance tools such as anti-fraud big data and anti-fraud App, which has greatly enhanced people’s sense of security.
Third, the awareness of network law popularization and assistance
The maintenance of the legal order in cyberspace requires not only strict law enforcement by law enforcement agencies, but also the establishment of law-abiding awareness by all sectors of society, rational use of cyberspace, and taking "the internet is not an illegal place" as the guiding ideology of online behavior. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to innovate the legal popularization mode, optimize the legal popularization content and improve the legal popularization methods.
The mode of popularizing law is diversified.China has innovated the traditional legal popularization mode with Internet thinking. In addition to the traditional legal popularization modes such as sending the law offline to the countryside and sending the law to the campus, it has made full use of the basic advantages of the Internet in the field of information dissemination, and carried out more extensive and in-depth legal popularization activities based on government websites, WeChat official account and short video platform accounts. Network information services such as forums, Weibo, social media accounts, and webcasts have amplified the actual effect of online legal popularization. The diversified, interesting and portable online legal popularization mode has made the relationship between the rule of law in cyberspace and the people closer, and the people are no longer passively accepting legal popularization knowledge, but participating in online legal popularization activities with a more active attitude.
Hierarchical content of law popularization.The effect of popularizing the law is closely related to the content of popularizing the law. In order to provide the legal knowledge urgently needed by the people and flexibly combine online judicial activities, China announced typical and representative judicial cases to the public based on judicial platforms such as China Judgment Document Network and China Trial Process Information Open Network. Let the people have a more intuitive and profound understanding of cyberspace laws and regulations through the way of case statement and case interpretation. In addition, the establishment of the rule of law in cyberspace is also based on legal popularization activities, which opens the door to public opinion, absorbs public legislative suggestions, clarifies legislative content, and builds the mass foundation of the rule of law in cyberspace.
The method of popularizing law is a think tank.In the digital age, in view of the endless new network governance problems, it is also necessary for network legal talents to participate in network legal activities to enhance the social effect of network legal popularization. In the past few years, major universities and research institutions in China have created and explored high-end think tanks of online rule of law, and the training direction of online rule of law talents has also changed from a single subject background to a compound research direction, which has provided strong intellectual support for the construction of online rule of law in China. In addition, in order to better meet the needs of governance practice, China has re-integrated the education model of law and other disciplines, innovatively developed two disciplines such as digital law and artificial intelligence law, and achieved the basic goal of talent training to meet the needs of the country.
(The author is an associate professor at Beihang University Law School and deputy director of the research base of Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Center)