Internet law and cybersecurity of the PRC

Abstract

The history of the emergence and subsequent cross-border evolution of Internet law around the world is, in a sense, paradoxical. The creators of the first version of the Internet as a national security information system hardly imagined that the legal regulation of the Internet, primarily in Western Europe, would fall under the influence of the Romano-Germanic legal system. We are talking about the basic division of the national legal order for continental Europe into public law (jus publicum) and private law (jus privatum). Accordingly, cybersecurity and other public needs of the Internet in continental Europe have become the subject of public Internet law. On the contrary, the specifics and protection of the individual rights of users and entrepreneurs in the Internet space have become the subject of regulation of private Internet law. In the context of such differentiation of the Internet space, the experience of the PRC is of particular interest, where the ratio of public need and private interest, due to the specifics of Chinese civilization, cannot be interpreted in the spirit of Western European dualism.