Abstract:

The large-scale cross-border transmission of digital personal information has intensified the risks of harm to individual rights, public interests, and national security interests. The international community has not yet reached unified legal standards to address this issue. To maintain national data sovereignty, promote the development of the data industry, and ensure personal information security, countries have chosen to regulate the outbound personal information transfer through domestic laws and regulations, whether by national special legislation, unified legislation of the union, or national decentralized legislation. China’s national special legislation created a two-track regulation mechanisms of “hard” and “soft”, taking three regulation methods: security assessment, protection certification, and standard contract. However, regulations do provide that the two tracks overlap. And the public-private regulation has not yet been formed, which hinders the safe transmission of personal information. To promote the domestic rule of law and foreign-related rule of law, China should adopt a systematic approach to fortify the regulatory system for outbound personal information transfer. This involves leveraging the synergy of the public-private system in terms of the subject, strengthening the balance of the offensive and defensive system from a regulatory perspective, and enhancing the interaction between the internal and external systems concerning space. All these efforts aim to contribute Chinese wisdom to the establishment of a multilateral consensus on the cross-border regulation of personal information.

Key words: foreign-related rule of law, state regulation, cross-border data flow, outbound personal information transfer, systematic perspective