A Geopolitical Economy Analysis of China and India’s Approaches to Transnational Data Governance

Recent literature on the behavior of rising powers in digital trade and data governance highlights their discourses of data sovereignty and desire to preserve domestic policy autonomy. This article contributes to the literature by employing a political economy lens that shifts the focus from the nation-state/inter-state framework towards the dynamics of state–capital relations, allowing for a more historical and contextual understanding of the geopolitics of data governance in emerging economies. Using China and India—two of the largest emerging economies—as comparative cases, and drawing on secondary data from government documents and other sources, the article argues that the interplay between the state’s interests in promoting security and development objectives and the commercial interests of domestic firms, global Big Tech companies, and transnational capital in data commercialization and market expansion has shaped the two countries’ respective trajectory of data governance over the past three decades. These developments are deeply embedded in each country’s distinctive political economic and geopolitical contexts. As a result, key policy developments in digital governance that might appear to be driven primarily by geopolitics may instead have deeper roots in evolving state–business relations.