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“There is no big data, only data.”

Today, when big data has become an extension of human beings and without digital tools, we can barely move forward. However, Li Xiaodong believes that our understanding of data is still at a very early stage, and there is no accurate estimate of the possible influence of data. judge. “Everyone is talking about concepts such as big data and data lakes, which are helpful for dissemination and understanding, but in fact, there is already data when someone produces it. From an academic point of view, big data is actually a market concept.”

Li Xiaodong is the founder and director of Fuxi Think Tank, director of the Internet Governance Research Center of Tsinghua University, part-time professor of the School of Public Administration, researcher, Ph.D.

These labels imply his professionalism in the field of digital economy, but in our interviews, Li Xiaodong rarely expressed those overly professional words. He likes to use metaphors to describe, which makes some complicated and obscure information Technical theories and controversies can be reduced to a vivid metaphor here.

Li Xiaodong believes, “The basic value of data lies in the exchange, and the premise of the exchange is the confirmation of rights. If you don’t clarify these and look at big data and data governance, you will not see the direction clearly.”

data value

Li Xiaodong believes that data actually runs through human history. It’s just that different technological means have changed the way data is presented. Li Xiaodong divides the processing and utilization of data into three stages of “digitalization, networking, and intelligence”, and we are in the process of moving from networking to intelligence. Among them, Li Xiaodong gave an analogy to the issues of data transactions and data prices that have attracted much attention, “It’s like in a vegetable market, some people are willing to buy, and some people are willing to sell. As long as it is within the pricing range, the market-based negotiated price will do. As for the issue of data supervision, Li Xiaodong said, “The so-called market-oriented allocation of data elements, the focus is not on what the government wants to control, but what the government does not care about. This is like us as parents. When children grow up, it is a process of gradually letting go.” You always interfere or restrain him, which is not good for his growth.” 

In his view, data as a factor of production can only generate value through exchange. But perhaps the next important question is how to determine the boundaries of rights.

Regarding the ownership of data, Li Xiaodong also used the metaphor of the relationship between husband and wife and children. Data is generated during the use of users and platforms. How do we confirm the ownership of data? “This may not be a very appropriate metaphor, but it can help more people understand the complexity.” Especially the personal information and privacy issues involved in the data, Li Xiaodong believes that the data assets we have talked about in recent years are of great importance to enterprises. It is said that there may be variables in the future. “For example, anti-monopoly, platform economic regulation, etc., are a reassessment of the value of the platform. And the issue of data ownership is a key point.” He believes that the future model of “separation of applications and data” may be the mainstream direction .

And if the trend he said holds true, for the vast majority of Internet companies today, the business model will mean a huge change.

But from this perspective, Li Xiaodong believes, “We are on the eve of the dawn of a new wealth explosion. The development of human technology will definitely subvert our existing business model and vested interest framework, so as to discover new growth points, so we believe that from In the long run, it will definitely happen, because this is an economic law.”

connector

In addition to being a scholar, there are some more labels surrounding Li Xiaodong: for example, he is also a young global leader of the World Economic Forum and the former vice president of ICANN, the Internet agency for assigning names and addresses.

Li Xiaodong, who defines himself as a “digital immigrant”, and his partners founded Fuxi Think Tank in 2019, a non-profit Internet research institution with the mission of narrowing the digital divide and promoting interconnection. The think tank is located in a small courtyard house among Internet parks in Shangdi, Beijing. In the early autumn when the heat is still hot, the gourd vines that almost cover the sky of this small courtyard are already full of drooping fruits.

Shangdi in Haidian District of Beijing has always been regarded by the outside world as the birthplace of my country’s information industry. As early as 1991, Shangdi Information Industry Base officially became China’s first comprehensive high-tech industrial park dominated by the electronic information industry. Over the past 30 years, China’s digital economy represented by the Internet industry has taken off rapidly. Today, as the world’s largest digital user market with more than 1 billion Internet users, we have completed the transition to “digital survival” to a certain extent.

But this is still a brand new continent – in Li Xiaodong’s view, although more than 130 countries and regions have formulated or are formulating laws and regulations related to data governance and data security, clear international rules have not yet been formed. These laws and regulations The “greatest common divisor” of is not clear. “How to form a certain consensus in the digital economy, especially on data governance rules, will be a very worthwhile thing to do.”

In Li Xiaodong’s view, this kind of mutual trust and consensus in the booming era of the Internet was one of the sources of dividends for our rapid development back then. “We look back at the development of China’s Internet industry. From the earliest days, Zhang Chaoyang and Li Yanhong all came back from abroad. Our technology, talents, and capital are all dividends of globalization. It was also an era of accelerated integration of China’s economy into globalization.”

Today, Li Xiaodong said that he still hopes to break the blockade, confrontation, and decoupling of technologies that exist today through the warm connection and communication scattered among these returnees. “When I was engaged in international exchanges and cooperation, I got the help of many masters who are the founders of the Internet today. Even today, it is this kind of interpersonal trust that enables them to travel across oceans. Come to China and help us.”

Now Li Xiaodong hopes to take over the stick and continue to leverage the power of those under the age of 35, especially those digital natives, but he refuses to use the word vision to describe what he is doing. “We personally may not be able to change the general environment, but we hope that when the world undergoes major changes, the mutual trust between young people in various countries who stand at the forefront of technology and industry can become a Resilience networks that resist the onset of conflict.”

Assets and Liabilities

Economic Observer: What is the data?

Li Xiaodong: When people mention data, they often refer to data in the digital age, but data is not only digital. If we want to clear the fog to see the real thing, we need to clarify these concepts.

In fact, data has been throughout human history, and humans are also generating data in the era of agricultural civilization; but the reason why we pay special attention to data after the process of informatization is because the data form has undergone great changes, and the transformation from “digital-network- “Intelligent” informatization process. We are now in the midst of the evolution from data networking to intelligence.

It is precisely because data can be networked and intelligent that we can talk about data becoming a factor of production. We know that an item can only generate value when it is exchanged. Understanding the marketization of data elements from the perspective of exchange will clearly see the future development direction.

The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to “improve the mechanism for the contribution of labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, management, data and other production factors to be evaluated by the market and the compensation determined according to the contribution”, which established data as a production factor for the first time. In March 2020, the “Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Building a More Complete System and Mechanism for Factor Market Allocation” further clearly stated “accelerating the cultivation of a data factor market”, “researching on improving the nature of property rights based on the nature of data” and “establishing and improving data property rights transactions and Industry Self-Regulatory Mechanism”.

Using data as a new type of production factor is a major theoretical and institutional innovation. Its core issue is the confirmation of data rights, especially the reasonable definition and allocation of data property rights based on sharing and exchange. However, it is forbidden to simply talk about single ownership.

Economic Observer: How to understand data governance?

Li Xiaodong: The data I just mentioned will definitely involve many parties, such as data owners and users, and there may be platform services and government supervision in the process. Therefore, the core of data governance is how to balance all parties, promote its sharing and exchange, and maximize the benefits and effectiveness of data. In this process, we need to see what role each party should play to facilitate the achievement of this goal.

Data governance covers the entire life cycle of data, including data collection, transmission and storage, as well as data processing, application and demise. Therefore, from another perspective, the scope of data governance includes not only the data itself, but also algorithms for processing data and intelligent applications based on data analysis results. All links from data production to circulation involve the participation of multiple parties, and the application of traditional governance methods may not be effective. A huge user group has accumulated a huge amount of data. How the platform plays a key role in governance is worth exploring in depth.

Data exchange is the core value throughout the Internet. The model from the beginning of the birth of the Internet is a kind of data exchange and data transaction. It is not the exchange and transaction that occurred until today when the exchange was established. In the Internet field, there is a governance model called multi-stakeholder The model requires full play to the role of the industry. Although this model cannot be simply applied to data governance, it is very important to learn from past successful experience and play the role of the industry. In the multi-stakeholder model, a large amount of data is not in the hands of the government, so the government’s collaboration with platforms and the private sector in the regulatory process is critical.

Only by doing a good job in data governance and building a good data element ecology can we talk about the revitalization and activation of data resource elements.

Economic Observer: At present, Chinese Internet companies are encountering the problem of data ownership. For enterprises, is data an asset, or may it become a liability in the future?

Li Xiaodong: In the era of digital economy, all relevant parties are advocating data ownership, especially on the enterprise side, everyone is talking about data assets. For enterprises, if data becomes an asset, it also needs to go through a process to complete the resourceization, capitalization and capitalization of data.

There is not much controversy about data assets with clear ownership, but the controversy lies in whether the Internet platform is the data holder or the owner has become a big issue, so communication and coordination between relevant parties is required.

In general, I think that in the future, the separation of platform applications and data will be a major trend, and it is also the solution to the controversy you mentioned.

Let me give you an example. For example, I used Xianyu some time ago, and then found that I basically have no credit at all. Because I seldom use Taobao and Alipay, they have not obtained my consumption data, so they cannot judge my credit status. But in fact, I shop a lot on other platforms, but because the data is not open, neither of them can obtain my consumption data.

And for external innovators, if there is no element of data, no matter how powerful the technology is, it is useless. This lack of openness ultimately hinders innovation.

This is also the original intention of the anti-monopoly against the platform economy some time ago – I hope that this market can continuously cultivate innovative subjects. This kind of anti-monopoly is not deliberately breaking the original rules, but is helping to introduce new innovation entities so that the industry can develop healthily.

But this does not mean that we advocate that all data should be brought out to the government or the country for supervision. The right to supervise does not mean that taking it away becomes ownership. Regulatory power is also a kind of use in a sense, that is, you can obtain these data, but it does not mean that you take the data away.

Because we must know that the premise of data generation is to use it. If data cannot bring value to the platform, then these commercial platforms have no meaning for existence. In this way, it is actually not conducive to promoting the active development of the market.

Therefore, it is very important how to grasp a boundary, protect data well, and maximize the value of data assets. Now American giants such as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. are already discussing the issue of data portability and how to protect data. In the “Personal Information Protection Law” issued by our country in 2021, it also clearly grants the right to transfer personal data. In the future, the way we expect is that the data generated by users on various platforms can be shared with different parties under certain conditions. application use.

Going back to what we said before, our current knowledge of data is very, very limited. Due to the continuous changes in the application method, scope and scale of data, data show different characteristics, stakeholders and corresponding rights. This is essentially a process of continuously enriching the connotation of data property rights. It can also explain that data property rights are not a fixed bundle of rights, but are in a process of continuous change.

In addition, the definition of property rights is directly related to transaction costs. Only when the benefits of data property rights definition are greater than the cost of property rights definition, relevant stakeholders have incentives to formulate rules and define property rights. In this sense, promoting the release of data value is the premise of property rights allocation, and data property rights are continuously improved with the release of data value.

number rules

Economic Observer: In recent years, many policies and regulations have been introduced in the field of digital economy, but from a global perspective, there does not seem to be a clear consensus.

Li Xiaodong: In recent years, China has made it very clear that it will vigorously develop the digital economy based on data. On the one hand, it will revitalize data elements, and on the other hand, it will strengthen data governance. It has initially established a relatively complete data governance rule system with Chinese characteristics. With the introduction of key concepts such as data elements, the promulgation of basic laws such as the “Data Security Law” and “Personal Information Protection Law”, and the construction of platforms such as the Beijing International Big Data Trading Center, China has gradually improved the rules in terms of data governance and accelerated The construction of data ownership has been established, and the data element market has been initially established.

But from a larger perspective, the degree and direction of cognition and understanding of data are different among national regulators. For example, Europe, the United States, and China have different requirements on data ownership and privacy boundaries, which directly determine the development boundaries of the digital economy industry in each country.

In fact, the process of digitalization is only a few decades, and our understanding of data itself is in the process of progress; but if we think that the next digital economy will create a brand new digital civilization, then a good data element ecology Or the digital economy ecology requires a construction process.

Previously, the Central Cyber ​​Security and Informatization Commission issued the “Action Outline for Improving Digital Literacy and Skills for All”, in which the role of personal digital literacy in data governance has also been further emphasized.

Economic Observer: Does this mean that we need an enlightenment on digital civilization?

Li Xiaodong: In data management, there are four roles: data owner, data holder, data regulator, and data user. These four roles all need to constantly update their knowledge of data.

I don’t know how many people have carefully read the “Personal Information Protection Law” and “Cyber ​​Security Law” that we have issued, which clearly define the provision, acquisition, and protection of personal information. For example, when we stay in a hotel, what information needs to be provided, what information does not need to be provided, and what personal information is not necessary to provide, all of which require the owner of the data to have a clear understanding. This is the first step in the protection of personal information.

The rules of digital civilization are a gradual establishment process that requires the participation of all parties. The four roles we mentioned all need to clarify their own rights and responsibilities.

However, it should also be noted that when people increasingly realize that the digital economy is based on data, and the value of data is increasing, they all hope that the data is in their own hands, so the Internet is becoming more and more fragmented, and the flow of data And sharing becomes a problem. If things go on like this, the phenomenon of data islands will be further exacerbated.

The development dividend of the digital economy ultimately benefits from an open ecology. Before, Internet companies liked to talk about closed loops. But ecology is not a closed loop. The real ecology must be diverse and open. Only in this way can sustainable development be achieved.