After “BAT,” What? Reimagining the internet for social development in post-crisis China

IF 2.1 2区 文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION
Min Tang
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Abstract

AbstractTaking the critical political economy approach, this paper continues Dallas Smythe’s and Yuezhi Zhao’s inquiries into technological development in contemporary China. It examines the trends and struggles of the “BAT” model—named after the three most influential Internet companies in the country, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent—in China’s digital expansion, which has been intimately connected to transnational financial capitalism in the past decade. Reflecting on this expansion’s all-encompassing socio-political consequences, a blind spot in the successful BAT story, the paper examines whether the BAT model is sustainable for China’s social development and, if not, the opportunities and alternatives lie ahead. The paper argues, in view of BAT’s financial and infrastructural turn, that how China’s ICT sector could move beyond a capital-driven mode of growth and reorient technologies for public and social development is a critical epistemological question.Keywords: Digital capitalismICT industrysocial developmentpolitical economyChina Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsMin TangMin Tang is an Associate Teaching Professor at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Bothell. Her research examines information communication technologies (ICTs) as sites of capitalist reproduction, power negotiations, and geopolitical rivalries. She is the author of Tencent: The Political Economy of China’s Surging Internet Giant (Routledge, 2019). Her work can also be found in the Chinese Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, and Information, Communication & Society.
BAT之后是什么?重新构想后危机时代中国的互联网社会发展
摘要本文采用批判的政治经济学方法,延续了斯迈斯和赵月芝对当代中国技术发展的探究。它考察了“BAT”模式(以中国最具影响力的三家互联网公司百度、阿里巴巴和腾讯命名)在中国数字扩张中的趋势和挣扎,这在过去十年中与跨国金融资本主义密切相关。本文反思了这种扩张所带来的全方位的社会政治后果,这是BAT成功案例中的一个盲点,并探讨了BAT模式对中国社会发展是否具有可持续性,如果不可持续性,未来的机遇和替代方案。本文认为,鉴于BAT的金融和基础设施转型,中国ICT行业如何超越资本驱动的增长模式,并为公共和社会发展重新定位技术是一个关键的认识论问题。关键词:数字资本主义ict产业社会发展政治经济中国披露声明作者未发现潜在的利益冲突。唐敏,华盛顿大学博塞尔分校跨学科艺术与科学学院副教授。她的研究考察了信息通信技术(ict)作为资本主义再生产、权力谈判和地缘政治竞争的场所。她著有《腾讯:中国崛起的互联网巨头的政治经济学》(Routledge出版社,2019年)。她的作品也可以在《中国传播杂志》、《国际传播杂志》和《信息、传播与社会》上找到。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.70
自引率
3.70%
发文量
38
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