Beyond Transplantation: A Study on the International Reference Path of China’s Digital Economy Legislation

Abstract

China’s digital economy legislation has entered the deep water area of “system construction” from the early stage of “blank filling.” In this process, how to scientifically handle the localization transplantation of international experience has become a core issue related to the quality of legislation and the national digital competitiveness. This paper holds that the fundamental dilemma faced by digital legislation at present is not the lack of overseas institutional resources, but the “adaptive trap of legal transplantation.” By comparing and analyzing typical models such as European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and combining the legislative practice of China’s Personal Information Protection Act, this paper refines the evolution logic of the international reference path from “passive acceptance” to “selective absorption” and then to “institutional feedback.” The article further points out that in frontier fields such as algorithmic governance, cross-border data flow and artificial intelligence legislation, China should abandon the dual thinking of “total copying” and “blind exclusion” and turn to a deep integration model based on “rule compatibility” and “sovereignty strengthening” to build a digital economy legal system with both international discourse power and local effectiveness.