The false promise of individual digital sovereignty in Europe: Comparing artificial intelligence and data regulations in China and the European Union

Abstract

In the digital sovereignty debate, countries and blocks seek to build technological and regulatory capacity to ascertain technological autonomy—definitions notwithstanding. Meanwhile, these actors seek to position themselves discursively, differentiating their own understanding of digital sovereignty from that of competing powers. In this context, the European Union (EU) elaborated the concept of digital sovereignty as something obtainable on an individual level, where regulations are put in place for users to be able to choose what personal data (not) to share. Meanwhile in China the government launched a number of artificial intelligence (AI) and data protection regulations along with an antitrust crackdown on numerous platform companies. This aimed at bringing technological giants (namely platforms), capable of handling massive amounts of data and influencing people's everyday lives, under stricter government rule. While the Chinese government has only partially framed these actions within frameworks akin to ‘digital sovereignty’, the purported aim was accruing individual autonomy vis‐à‐vis big techs, arguably falling close to the EU's ‘digital sovereignty’ discursive framework. By comparing EU and Chinese AI and data governance regulations, this article unpacks the EU discourse on the individual element of digital sovereignty and finds the EU regulatory effort insufficient to achieve its declared objective.