Abstract:

In the increasingly fierce international cyberspace, the boundaries of data sovereignty governance have become increasingly blurred, and sovereign states have actively launched data sovereignty strategies to ensure the sovereign security of their data. The United States passed the CLOUD Act in March 2018, aiming to resolve security threats in cross-border data flows and safeguard national data sovereignty. The study of this bill is of great significance for improving China's data sovereignty strategy and data strategy system. This article, with a comprehensive analysis of the CLOUD Act, interprets its contents and explores its core objectives and construction models. By a comparative study, it is found that China's data sovereignty strategy has following features: it is based on the principle of “network sovereignty”; it takes development as its core goal; it has state power authorities as the core subjects, and it is of a top-down manner. Meanwhile, this paper, in light of the CLOUD Act, puts forward suggestions on China's data sovereignty strategy system in respect of macro top-level design guidance, inspection of specific jurisdictional strategies, promotion of international data exchange, and collaborative governance of cyberspace.

Key words: CLOUD Act, Data sovereignty, Strategic system, Cross-border data flow, Cyber space, Data security