A Comparative Analysis of China and the EU’s Digital Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty has emerged as a prominent concept in the global struggle to regulate data, technology infrastructures, and digital economies. While China pursues a highly state-centric framework of cyber sovereignty, the European Union emphasises on data protection, privacy, and technology autonomy. While there are increasing research on their respective perspectives to digital sovereignty, there is very limited comparative research. This paper makes a comparative discourse analysis of official texts from the Chinese government and EU institutions to fill the gap. It employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to identify key thematic clusters, discursive shifts, and rhetorical strategies in policy documents, speeches, and strategic plans, and reveals their divergences and convergences behind the concept. The research contributes to the understanding of the spread of digital sovereignty in global cyber governance.