Governing data through privacy after China's PIPL: Discursive strategies, layered compliance and power dynamics in digital platform policies

Digital platforms play a central role in data governance, yet their privacy practices raise global concerns regarding information asymmetry and inadequate user protection. China's 2021 Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) marks a significant regulatory intervention, but limited research explores a nuanced understanding of how platforms translate and implement this law in practice. Through a critical discourse analysis of the privacy policies of four leading Chinese digital platforms—Baidu, Taobao, WeChat, and Douyin—this study examines how these platforms construct, characterize, and operationalize privacy, compliance, and user rights in the PIPL era through their governance practices. The analysis identifies four strategic discursive patterns: legitimizing data extraction as lawful and socially beneficial; framing strong privacy protection as moral responsibility; circumscribing user rights within platform-defined parameters; and managing policy updates as a unilateral governance mechanism. These strategies demonstrate how PIPL is enacted in a layered and performative manner, transforming legal obligations into discursive tools that consolidate platform authority and normalize asymmetric data relations. This study contributes to understanding platform governance scholarship by illustrating how privacy policies function as governance instruments, navigating regulatory demands while mediating state-platform-user relationships. It also provides practical insights for regulators to strengthen enforcement mechanisms and public accountability of user protection within China's rapidly evolving digital ecosystem, while offering comparative value for understanding privacy governance across global regulatory frameworks within platformized environments.