This Additional Issue of Tsinghua China Law Review includes four enlightening contributions to the 4th Forum on Computational Law held by the Institute for Studies on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Tsinghua University. The forum focused on Data Governance and Legal Tech, consisting of four divisions, namely Personal Information Protection and Utilization, Data Assets and Data Exchange, Smart Contracts and Digital Currency and Natural Language Processing in Legal Practices.

In the article entitled The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and the Emergence of Smart Contracts and Cryptocurrencies: Should We Try to Teach an Old Dog Some New Tricks?, Professor André Janssen discussed potential problems brought by the latest digital developments such as smart contracts and cryptocurrencies, to CISG, one of the most successful private law conventions of all times. The article focuses on three major problems: (1) the payment with cryptocurrencies under the CISG, (2) the sales of cryptocurrencies under the CISG, and (3) the possible lack of discernibility of consumer sales contracts and the element of internationality of the contract due to smart contracting.

In the article entitled Could the “Dragon” Now Fly Beyond Borders? Contextualizing Regulatory Aspects and Risks for China’s CBDC Cross-Border Use, Dr. Lu Lerong and Zhang Lingsheng addressed three regulatory considerations relating to the cross-border use of CBDCs: (1) the anti-money laundering concern when financial authorities experiment CBDCs across multi-jurisdictions; (2) the Retail CBDC liquidity risks identification; and (3) the capital flow-in and settlements through future Wholesale CBDC. The authors provided a series of policy recommendations to facilitate the circulation of China’s CBDCs in international financial markets and to achieve the RMB Internationalization.

In the article entitled Application of Property Law to Data as Property, Professor Tetsuo Morishita argued for the importance of developing property law rules for data that could be commonly applied to both personal and non-personal information. Instead of focusing on ownership as the exclusive right to data, as the conventional arguments about data ownership suggest, this article considers the content of property law that is more suited to the nature of data. The article argues for applying property law rules to data transactions with some modifications reflecting the nature of data transactions. The author also evaluated the appropriateness of the application of property law rules in some typical cases.

In the article entitled Exploring the Way to Protect Privacy in the Electronic Workplace Proposals for Australian and Chinese Context, Dr. Danyang Guo provided suggestions for developing privacy protection in Australian and Chinese electronic workplace. For Australia, the author proposed expanding the definition of “personal information” and removal of exemptions for small business and employee records from relevant regulations, and improving company policy to protect privacy. For China, the author recommended authorities to improve the Personal Information Protection Law, to respect the right to reasonable expectations of employees through the labor contract, and to improve the scenario-based provisions of the Cybersecurity Standard Operating to distinguish the private and public the electronic workplace.

We wish to extend sincere gratitude to our fellow editors for their time and effort devoted to the publication of this issue. Especially, we are extremely grateful to Professor Gao Simin of the Tsinghua University School of Law for her mentorship.

We would like to thank the firm support and warm encouragement from the School of Law, Tsinghua University. Special thanks to the Institute for Studies on Artificial Intelligence and Law of Tsinghua University for its generous financial support for this issue.

CAO Wenjiao & WU Peiyao

Co-Editors-in-Chief

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