European and Chinese Models Facing Digital Political Manipulation

Tensions between Autonomy and Sovereignty.

Abstract

Automated processing of personal data for digital political microtargeting poses unprecedented regulatory challenges for protecting fundamental rights. This work comparatively examines how the European General Data Protection Regulation and the Chinese Personal Information Protection Law establish limits to these practices from opposed conceptions of information autonomy and state sovereignty. Qualitative methodology of functional comparative legal analysis was employed, examining primary normative provisions, guiding principles, protection mechanisms, and exceptions of both frameworks. Results reveal significant formal convergences in categories such as consent, transparency, and purpose limitation, but profound functional divergences in their protection structures and institutional independence. The European framework structures protections where individual autonomy operates as a fundamental right limiting state power, while the Chinese framework structures protections where state security operates as a hierarchically superior value. The European framework faces technical limitations derived from persistent algorithmic opacity, while the Chinese framework faces institutional limitations due to absence of supervisory body independence. It is concluded that global regulatory convergence obscures profound structural divergences rooted in opposed political and philosophical conceptions about data protection in contexts of digital political manipulation.