The right to explanation as a preliminary procedural right in protecting users’ data rights in platform contexts under Chinese law: A doctrinal study
Keywords:
Right to Explanation, Preliminary Procedural Right, Protection of Users’ Data Rights, Platform Context, Chinese LawAbstract
This article examines the normative position and limits of the right to explanation in the platform context under Chinese law. Using doctrinal research to analyze laws, administrative regulations, and regulatory rules, it argues that explanation-related norms in Chinese law have already formed an institutional basis. However, this basis remains fragmented, contextual, and embedded, and has not yet formed a unified, complete, and directly enforceable overall structure of rights. The right to explanation can improve the recognizability and intelligibility of relevant processing, but it is not sufficient by itself to secure effective protection of users’ data rights, because it does not automatically give users real capacities of choice, objection, and remedy. For this reason, the right to explanation should be understood as a preliminary procedural right. It further clarifies that the concept of a preliminary procedural right is not an expressly established statutory category in Chinese law, but a normative-doctrinal reconstruction based on existing legal materials. Its institutional function is not to complete protection independently, but to provide the triggering conditions for later protective mechanisms. On this basis, institutional improvement in the platform context should focus on the threshold for triggering the duty to explain, the minimum standard of explanation, procedural connection, human review, platform accountability, operational procedures, external oversight, and interest balancing, so that the right to explanation can be truly embedded in the continuous structure of the protection of users’ data rights.
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