Study On The Terms Of Cross Border Data Flows In RCEP And China’s Execution Of Treaty

Data cross-border flow is one of the important driving forces for the development of digital economy,but a comprehensive and unified international data cross-border flow supervision system has not yet been formed.For a long time,the United States and Europe have dominated the formulation of global cross-border data flow terms.The Terms formulated by them are all self-development oriented,maintaining their own needs of digital trade development,and ignoring those of the developing countries.The weakening and absence of discourse power in the regulation of cross-border data flow in developing countries has led to that the development of their digital trade has been subjected to the cross-border data flow terms drawn up by the United States and Europe which brings the unfairness of digital competition.On November 15,2020,15 countries including 10 ASEAN countries and China formally signed the regional comprehensive economic partnership(RCEP).RCEP mainly stipulates the cross-border data flow and related issues in a special chapter under the framework of Chapter 12 e-commerce,and specifies the basic principles that each party should follow in developing its own cross-border data flow supervision system.It is also the first cross-border data flow supervision system with high standards established in the Asia Pacific region that not only involves a wide range of areas,takes into account the interests of all parties.It has also contributed to the Asian plan to promote the construction of a global supervisi on system for cross-border data flow.Starting from the sorting of the cross-border data flow clauses in RCEP,this paper compares them with the cross-border data flow clauses in other major free trade agreements from the perspective of legal issues by ways of comparative analysis method,then summarizes the reasons for the setting and progress of the cross-border data flow clauses in RCEP,and analyzes the challenges faced by China during the performance period of the cross-border data flow clauses in RCEP.And the countermeasures to these challenges have been put forward.Firstly,this paper summarizes the basic theory of RCEP data cross-border flow clauses.It has defined cross-border flows and some related concepts,limited the scope and provided a basic theoretical framework for the discussion of cross-border flow terms of RCEP,analyzed the background of cross-border flow terms of RCEP,and finally clarified the necessity and inevitability of cross-border flow terms.Secondly,it combs the cross-border flow terms of RCEP,and introduces the main contents of these terms.It also makes a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences of the data cross-border flow provisions in the trade agreement and the reasons of their setting compared with the data cross-border flow provisions in the comprehensive and progressive trans Pacific Partnership Agreement(CPTPP),and on this basis it summarizes the characteristics of the legal provisions on the cross-border flow of RCEP data which have been also the progress of the cross-border flow provisions of RCEP data.Thirdly,it analyzes the challenges facing China in fulfilling the data cross-border flow provisions of RCEP,including the challenges of free flow of RCEP data,cross-border data dialogue mechanism and dispute settlement mechanism when fulfilling the provisions of RCEP.Finally,the finishing point is China’s countermeasures.China is one of the initiators and active promoters of the cross-border flow terms of RCEP data.The implementation of the data cross-border flow terms of RCEP is of great significance to China.By putting forward tentative and targeted solutions to the challenges faced by China in fu lfilling the RCEP data cross-border flow provisions combed in the previous section,China has improved its data cross-border flow supervision system and accumulated experience for China to further join the CPTPP with more mature provisions.