How China Governs Data: Evidence Mined from the Central Government Policy Documents

ABSTRACT Data governance policy is of great importance for the development of digital economy. This paper proposes a four‐dimensional policy mining framework to analyze the 1,097 central data governance policies. We depict the development trajectory, analyze the policy subjects involved into the policy‐making, trace the sources of policy, and characterize the policy tool structure based on the policy coding. We find that the core departments of data governance policy making need to strengthen the awareness of data governance; Policy‐making should source enough convincing and authoritative policies to strengthen the long‐term effectiveness and impact policies; There are imbalances and deficiencies of policy tool structure. It provides reference for other countries in data governance.