Against the backdrop of global digital technology competition, the EU's digital strategy has undergone a paradigm shift from internal market integration to global rule-shaping. The June 2025 EU International Digital Strategy marked this transition, subsequently reinforced by the Data Alliance Strategy and the Digital Omnibus Act with their rule-export orientation. The author raises three core questions: the process, drivers, and essential impacts of this transformation, and will analyze its historical evolution, dual drivers, intrinsic nature, as well as new trends in China-EU interaction and multidimensional impacts through the framework of global digital competition.

I. The Evolution of Normative Power-Driven Paradigm Transformation in EU Digital Strategy

This section traces the evolution of the EU's digital strategy from "regional governor" to "global leader." During the 2015 Digital Single Market Strategy period, the EU focused on internal market integration, eliminating barriers in cross-border e-commerce, parcel delivery, geo-blocking, and copyright mechanisms through three pillars and sixteen action plans. By "institutional construction," it built a unified digital space and consolidated its internal development foundation. As the internal system matured and influence spilled over, the 2020 "Shaping Europe's Digital Future" and 2025 "International Digital Strategy" marked a strategic shift toward shaping global digital rules: strategically prioritizing rule-shaping in external affairs, achieving extraterritorial application of rules through instruments like the Digital Markets Act, and promoting standard exports through digital partnerships and technological cooperation. These two phases were not separate but dynamically balanced—the high-standard internal rule system provided guarantees for external export, while international adoption enhanced the value of the single market, ultimately forming an "inside-out, internal-promoting-external" transformation path, reflecting the EU's strategic vision of building digital sovereignty and seeking global governance leadership.

II. Dual Drivers of Normative Power-Driven Paradigm Transformation in EU Digital Strategy

This section analyzes the dual drivers behind the EU digital strategy's transformation from "regional governor" to "global digital rule-shaper": the interaction of international systemic pressure and unit-level threat perception, which together constitute a dynamic "pressure-perception-response" process. At the international systemic pressure level, the reshaping of the global digital technology landscape has left the EU clearly lagging behind China and the US in core technologies such as artificial intelligence, making it difficult to maintain competitive advantages through the digital single market alone; intensified digital geopolitical competition has made digital infrastructure a key element affecting national security and strategic autonomy; fierce global digital rule competition has raised EU concerns about marginalization, necessitating the conversion of rule-making advantages into global competitiveness. At the unit-level threat perception level, the EU has developed a "dual distrust" perception toward China and the US, positioning China as a "systemic rival" while remaining vigilant against US long-arm jurisdiction and digital hegemony—this perception drives its search for a "third way"; through securitization reconstruction, the EU has elevated digital issues from "developmental risks" to "existential threats" concerning sovereignty and security, reshaping strategic choice logic; based on its "normative power" identity, the EU responds to threats through institutions and rules, converting internal rules into global standards. The two drivers form a mutually reinforcing dynamic cycle: international systemic pressure is perceived and amplified by decision-makers, generating "digital sovereignty" anxiety and cognitive upgrading, leading to the formulation of offensive digital strategies such as the Digital Markets Act to respond to external pressure through rule export, ultimately completing the strategic paradigm transformation.

III. The Intrinsic Nature of Normative Power-Driven Paradigm Transformation in EU Digital Strategy

This section explores the intrinsic nature of the EU digital strategy paradigm transformation: achieving power diffusion through institutional export and consolidating internal resilience through security maintenance, both serving the fundamental goal of strategic autonomy in the digital age. In terms of institutional export, the EU relies on its unified large market, through three mechanisms—setting market access rules, adopting first-mover strategies in new domains, and building alliance-based rule promotion—to convert internal rules into international standards, transforming from an "unconscious user" to an "active exporter," intending to master "rule-making power" in the digital age and compress competitors' strategic space. In terms of security maintenance, the EU has shifted from early economic security maintenance to comprehensive security, consolidating internal resilience through three dimensions: achieving technological autonomy, pursuing supply chain "de-risking," and strengthening digital infrastructure control. Institutional export provides external guarantees for security maintenance, while security maintenance lays internal foundations for institutional export; both are unified under the "digital sovereignty" system—institutional export protects "regulatory sovereignty," while security maintenance protects "technological sovereignty" and "economic sovereignty," ultimately pointing to "strategic autonomy" amid geopolitical competition, enabling the EU to avoid forced alignment, maintain freedom of action and global influence.

IV. Impacts of Normative Power-Driven Paradigm Transformation in EU Digital Strategy

This section analyzes the multidimensional impacts of the EU digital strategy paradigm transformation on global digital governance from power, institutional, and security dimensions. At the power level, the EU's perception of digital issues has shifted from developmental risks to existential threats; its power practice has shifted from defensive internal order maintenance to competition-oriented external weakening of others' power, weakening other countries' enterprise competitiveness through market access thresholds while increasing investment to enhance technological autonomy capabilities. This transformation has elevated digital power competition from enterprise market competition to national strategic competition, presenting zero-sum game characteristics, with competition scope expanding to digital infrastructure, critical resource control, and other dimensions, and competition intensity deepening due to exclusive logic. At the institutional level, the EU's institutional export approach has shifted from passive radiation to active shaping, converting internal rules into de facto global standards through market scale and institutional capacity, compressing other countries' institutional choice space through coercive constraints, triggering strategic countermeasures, and leading to a pattern of multiple institutional models competing in parallel in global digital governance, with institutions becoming key resources for competing governance leadership. At the security level, the EU's unilateral measures such as raising market access thresholds to enhance internal security capabilities have been interpreted by others as threatening arrangements due to the high interconnectivity of digital security, triggering reciprocal responses and plunging global digital space into a dilemma where "the more one pursues one's own security, the harder it is to achieve common security," with security issues politicized, overall system stability reduced, and common security goals becoming increasingly difficult.

V. Conclusion

This section analyzes the EU digital strategy's paradigm transformation from "integrating the digital single market" to "shaping global digital rules," noting that this transformation stems from the interaction of "international systemic pressure" and "unit-level threat perception," with its intrinsic nature consistently being the dual-track approach of "institutional export" and "security maintenance" to achieve strategic autonomy. This transformation has intensified global digital power competition and governance rule competition, particularly manifested in the EU's positioning of China as a "systemic rival" and elevation of technological competition to governance model competition. Finally, it proposes that China should balance development and security, autonomy and openness, advance technological innovation and international rule-building simultaneously, and actively participate in reforming the global digital governance system.