The US has started adopting certain elements in data and digital governance that have been pioneered by China, in contrast to a previous reluctance to do so, a privacy lawyer with experience in both countries said.
The US has started adopting certain elements in data and digital governance that have been pioneered by China, in contrast to a previous reluctance to do so, a privacy lawyer with experience in both countries said.“I want to speak to both sides, China and the US, and make an argument possibly disputable that they have much in similarity which they are not readily admitting,” Scott Livingston, a lawyer for Dell Technologies who has worked in both countries, said at a privacy conference* today.
Only a few years ago, Livingston said, regulators in Washington DC held the position that “you can’t compete with China by becoming China,” which has in the past several years imposed strict rule on the processing of data, particularly on cross-border data flows.
Recent developments in the US, however, showed that “a lot of recent regulations and executive actions here in the US, even if they're not admitting this, kind of are influenced by China, even as they're responding to China,” he observed.
One example, Livingston said, is the Biden administration’s executive order on preventing access to Americans’ bulk sensitive personal data and government-related data by countries of concern, including China, Russia and North Korea.
“This is the first time the US has regulated cross border data flows from the standpoint of national security,” he said.
The response from China, he added, is that “this is what we’ve been saying all along.”
The executive order on bulk data is also similar to the concept of important data introduced by China, which goes beyond personal data and requires higher level of protection of data that’s significant to national interests, Livingston said. “I think it’s going to continue to grow,’ he said.
The other area that China is influencing the US is technological standard-setting, Livingston said.
In the past few years, China’s been playing an active role in international standard-setting bodies, raising concerns from regulators in the US. But the US is now also seeking more participation in this area, he said.
He highlighted a report from the National Security Agency that called for “renewed US leadership” in this area and the reintroduced of Promoting United States Leadership in Standards Act by Senators Marsha Blackburn and Mark Warner.
“So it's this weird kind of situation where in reacting to China's rise, you're also kind of mirroring some of it as well … even as they say they are different systems,” the lawyer said.
In the meantime, China has started taking steps to lessen some of its regulatory requirements, according to both Livingston and Barbara Li, a Chinese lawyer from Reed Smith.
“Indeed [Chinese regulators] are relaxing the governance and they are trying to provide more space for innovations,” Li said.
* IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2025, Washington, DC, April 22-24, 2025.
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