The platformization of Chinese Society: infrastructure, governance, and practice

By adopting a universal perspective, several scholars have called upon governments and other regulatory bodies to intervene in the emerging platform society, not leaving its development solely to the dynamics of the market (Khan, 2017; Pasquale, 2018; Srnicek, 2017; Van Dijck, Poell, & de Waal, 2018). Although this call for increased regulation is particularly welcome in the US and Europe, it seems problematic, if not ironic, in the Chinese context. We are currently witnessing the fast process of the platformization of Chinese society. The ubiquity of WeChat in everyday Chinese life presents the best example as Plantin and De Seta demonstrate in this special issue. However, in the context of omnipresent government regulation and intervention in China, platformization generates a set of problems and issues that differ from those in in the West. Similarly, we need to critically interrogate the seemingly “natural” connection between the platform society and “global capitalism,” which has been theorized as “platform capitalism” (Srnicek, 2016). China presents an odd case, as it is hard to consider China a capitalist society (Nonini, 2008). Hence, our aim is to engage critically with the platformization of Chinese society by applying the case of China as a method (Chen, 2010) to interrogate, complicate, and complement current research on the global rise of the platform society. We thus ask the following question: What does the platform society mean for China, and what does China mean for our thinking about the platform society?