Late last month, an op-ed authored by Hsin-na (馨娜) published in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) astutely observed how the Chinese Communist Party uses its National Digital Asset Authentication and Registration Center to enmesh individuals’ digital lives within its state surveillance network. In today’s digital age, the question of where data rights lie is no longer a purely economic matter, but part of a political struggle for defending sovereignty.
As Hsin-na said, Taiwan still heavily relies on multinational tech giants such as Google, Meta and Apple. Although terms of service agreements exist, personal data remain vulnerable to privacy concerns. If Taiwan is to chart its own digital future, it must soberly consider the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese and US models to carve out a third path forward.
The Chinese model undeniably has its advantages in tech governance. In an age where data functions as a new kind of productive input, the unified authentication of social media accounts, virtual assets and digital legacies can work to boost administrative efficacy, and deter online fraud and low-level corruption.
In contrast, the US model, which champions the free market and on which Taiwan currently depends, digital lives in their entirety are put squarely in the hands of multinational companies. It is a kind of technological outsourcing that does little to resist backdoor surveillance by great powers, and reduces data sovereignty to fodder for corporate extraction.
Taiwan should develop a rules-based decentralized digital rights management system. Using the immutability and distributive nature of blockchain technology, the registered ownership of data assets can be shifted from government agencies and privately owned platforms to a secure public ledger. Under this framework, the role of the state would be to make the rules, rather than hold the data. Taiwan could enjoy the benefits of the Chinese model’s ease of administration, while avoiding the risks associated with data assets being locked into private platforms under the US model.
Critically, while China uses its nationalization of data assets as a means of control, Taiwan should use secure rights-recognition technologies as a tool for overseeing public powers. Although the Act on Property Declaration by Public Servants (公職人員財產申報法) already includes virtual assets, it remains limited within an antiquated scope of periodic declarations and black box review processes. A future “Taiwan model” could require public officials to disclose their assets in a public chain, moving toward a system of full transparency available for public scrutiny. Not only would this prevent corruption, but it would also show the world that in an age of digital encoding, freedom is not gifted by the state, but can be upheld by the people through the joint safeguard of the rule of law.
Taiwan should embrace an innovative legal approach: neither rejecting genuine technological strengths, nor blindly following the commercial logic of others. Data sovereignty must be returned to the people, and power must operate in the light of day — this should be Taiwan’s path in the digital age.
Julian Chu is a scientist living in the US.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
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