Information Governance in China: Data, Power, and the Law

By Yuping Lin | Volume 9 | Issue 1

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Information is central to governance. In China, the State controls information, such as GDP data, to guide policy and shape political narratives. Given the importance of information, relevant parties, such as central and local governments, tend to monopolize its production and dissemination. This monopoly leads to the proliferation of misinformation, which not only undermines the governance but also affects public trust in the State. To address this problem, the first step is to understand the logic behind misinformation generation, followed by identifying potential solutions. This article traces the history of misinformation production through the lens of the principal-agent tension between central and local governments. It reveals that decentralization before the 2010s enabled the local governments to manipulate data. In response, the central government initiated a centralization process that significantly curtailed local misinformation, while inadvertently shifting the risk of data distortion to the central level. This systematic risk of misinformation calls for further solutions. Under current legal systems, existing solutions can be categorized as the Regulatory Solution (oversight through regulation) and the Rights Solution (endowing the public with a “right to know”). While both address certain aspects of misinformation, they remain inadequate in others due to institutional limitations. A third solution is therefore needed. The Structural Solution aims to divide information production authority among multiple entities, creating mutual checks and internal oversight among data producers. This solution supplements the existing two solutions’ loopholes and deserves further exploration

Yuping Lin.

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