[Constructing China's independent knowledge system].
With the rapid development of technologies such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and the metaverse, mankind is entering the fourth industrial revolution. While this industrial revolution has further promoted economic and social development, it has also triggered a profound change in the national governance model. The rule of law, which is an important basis for the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, has undergone tremendous changes in terms of elements, scenarios, functions, thinking and methods, and is increasingly moving towards digital rule of law, a new form of rule of law civilization, and digital jurisprudence has come into being. Categories and their systems are indicators of the level of development of human theoretical thinking at a certain historical stage, and are also a sign of the maturity of various sciences. To promote the maturity of digital law and form an independent knowledge system, the primary meaning is to pay attention to summarizing the cognitive achievements, making them conceptualized and categorical, and constructing a mature category system on this basis. The development of digital technology has brought great opportunities for the construction of China's independent digital legal system.
First of all, the many severe challenges brought by digital technology to the legal knowledge system require Chinese legal scholars to take the initiative to reflect on, update and reform the existing legal category system. Fundamentally speaking, the current legal knowledge is based on the industrial and commercial society, mainly focusing on physical space, public law and private law, rights and obligations, etc. Digital technology promotes human society from an industrial and commercial society to a digital society, and digital jurisprudence attempts to respond to the two development trends of legalization and digitization of legal life, and provides theoretical interpretation and value guidance for the development of law and the construction of order in the digital age. Therefore, effectively dealing with the relationship between the digital legal knowledge system and the existing legal knowledge system is the premise for constructing an independent digital legal category system. Specifically, there are three paths: one is to continue some categories, such as legal subjects, legal values, legal spirits, etc.; The second is to update some categories, such as legal acts, rights, powers and other concepts have undergone different degrees of changes in the digital age, which need to be updated in light of the characteristics of the times; In the traditional sense, law mainly focuses on the study of objects, people, spiritual products and human behaviors, while digital law pays more attention to issues such as data, algorithms, and digital governance, so it is necessary to create some new concepts and new categories.
Secondly, the vivid practice of digital rule of law in contemporary China has laid a solid practical foundation for the construction of an independent digital legal category system. Category is a basic concept formed on the basis of practice that reflects the essential attributes and universal connections of things, condenses the results of human thinking, and projects the whole world and all life. Thus, human practice is the source of living water for the formation of categories. At present, China is actively carrying out the practice of digital rule of law, strengthening the promotion of digital legislation, digital justice, digital policing, digital procuratorate, digital legal services, etc., and taking the deep integration of digital technology and rule of law construction as a new driving force and new advantage for rule of law construction. China's digital rule of law practice is at the forefront of the world, accumulating a lot of experience, but also encountering some problems, which provides rich theoretical research materials for the independent development of China's digital jurisprudence, and we can summarize and refine some concepts and categories of digital jurisprudence from these experiences and problems.
Finally, the construction of the global digital governance order needs the theoretical support of digital jurisprudence. At present, digital technology is fully integrated into the economic, political, cultural, and social fields at an unprecedented speed, and more countries and individuals are involved in the digital wave with super penetration and connectivity. In this process, Western countries have tried to extend hegemonism and power politics to global digital governance, and continue to pursue narrow egoistic values in power structures and institutional structures. This is contrary to the basic spirit of digital governance of interconnection, joint contribution and sharing, and mutual benefit and win-win results, and it is urgent to build a fair and reasonable global digital governance order. To this end, in addition to theoretical research on a community with a shared future for mankind and digital justice in cyberspace, we also need to conduct in-depth analysis of specific concepts and categories such as digital **, national sovereignty, and disputes in the digital field, which is also an important foundation for China to participate in international digital governance and establish a right to speak.
Digital law is an emerging discipline that studies digitizable objects, behaviors and related rights and obligations in the digital society, focusing on the cutting-edge development and application of digital technology. To construct China's independent digital jurisprudence category system, it is necessary to pay attention to technological development and track the process of rule of law. It is necessary not only to take root in China's practice, but also to have a global vision.
On the one hand, it is necessary to coordinate the relationship between "technical governance" and "rule of law". An important feature of the digital society is that under the premise of digital transformation, it relies on the Internet to solve a series of problems encountered by people in real life from the level of technical support and operation mechanism of the most fundamental significance. Under the influence of its own practical functions and institutional dividends, digital technology has been widely used in commercial, legislative, law enforcement, judicial, legal services and other activities. In this process, the relationship between people that used to be direct to each other has gradually evolved into a relationship between people through digital technology. However, digital technology is highly specialized and hidden, embodies a strong instrumental rational logic, and may even lead to a situation where excessive emphasis and reliance on technological tools ignore people's actual demands. Therefore, to construct China's independent digital jurisprudence category system, it is necessary to effectively coordinate the relationship between "technical governance" and "rule of law". When constructing China's independent digital legal category system, it is necessary to fully consider the basic logic of digital technology operation and the technical architecture of digital rule of law. The refinement and sublimation of legal concepts and categories should meet the needs of the development of digital science and technology, and conform to the basic spirit of science. For example, when refining the concept of "smart justice", it is first necessary to clarify the technical architecture, operation rules and current shortcomings of digital technology of smart justice, and then construct the concept in combination with the characteristics of justice. At the same time, it is necessary to use mainstream values and the spirit of the rule of law to correct the deviation in the choice of digital technology means and prevent the erosion of citizens' individual rights and rights.
On the other hand, balance autonomy and openness. The openness, virtuality and interactivity of digitalization have effectively solved the problem of effective connection across geographical and spatial constraints, and while becoming an important tool for promoting international cooperation, it has also brought new risks to international security and injected new connotations into the relations between major countries. To construct China's independent digital legal category system, it is necessary to respond effectively to the background of this era and correctly handle the relationship between autonomy and openness. The so-called autonomy mainly emphasizes that the construction of the category system of digital law must fully consider China's historical continuity, social conditions and practical needs. In addition to emphasizing "China" as a boundary condition for exploring the causal mechanism, we should also emphasize the global significance of the China issue. China attaches great importance to the significance of digital technology to the construction of the rule of law, and has carried out rich practices in digital legislation, digital law enforcement, smart justice, digital policing, and digital legal services. These vivid practices and the worldview and approach reflected behind them should be the basic premise for the construction of China's independent digital legal category system. We should fully summarize the current practice of digital rule of law construction in China, and on this basis, show the universal significance of the construction of digital rule of law in contemporary China. It should be noted that emphasizing the autonomy of China's digital jurisprudence is not to establish a set of closed concepts and systems of digital jurisprudence, but to improve the ability of academic communication and dialogue in the wave of digitalization that has swept the world, and to contribute China's solutions and wisdom to global digital governance. Therefore, the construction of China's digital jurisprudence category system should have a full insight into the game between major countries in the digital field and the constraints of global digital governance technology on the "new track" of digital, and respond effectively to the problems of unbalanced development of digital society, imperfect rules, unreasonable order, widening information gap between different countries and regions, and the difficulty of existing cyberspace governance rules to reflect the wishes and interests of most countries.
Zheng Zhihang, professor at Shandong University Law School and researcher at the Institute of National Governance, Shandong University