The geopolitics of infrastructuralized platforms: the case of Alibaba

IF 4.2 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Information Communication & Society Pub Date : 2022-10-01 DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2022.2128599

Hong Shen, Yujia He

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引用次数: 6

Abstract

ABSTRACT Contemporary digital platforms have become increasingly infrastructuralized, and started to raise geopolitical tensions with their global expansion. Amidst the heightened geopolitical competition between the US and China, the growing power of Chinese infrastructuralized platforms has made them the center of recent geopolitical dynamics. Drawing from an exploratory case study, this paper discusses Alibaba, one of the most prominent Chinese Internet giants, as an infrastructuralized platform, and highlights its geopolitical struggles. Often perceived as an e-commerce company, Alibaba has become ‘infrastructuralized’: its now-massive digital empire has moved beyond e-commerce, expanding into almost every aspect of China’s and global digital economy such as logistics, finance, offline retailing, and cloud computing. This paper traces three highly visible cases in Alibaba’s global journey – its failed deal with MoneyGram in 2017, the uneven global journey of Alibaba Cloud, and the construction of the electronic World Trade Platform – to illustrate three key dimensions of the geopolitics of infrastructuralized platforms – namely, the geopolitics of everyday data, the geopolitics of the visibility-invisibility tension, and the geopolitics of modularity. By doing so, it contributes to the following two areas of scholarship. On the one hand, it contributes to the growing literature on ‘infrastructures and platforms’ by foregrounding the geopolitical dimensions of Chinese infrastructuralized platforms. On the other hand, it adds to the literature on the ‘geopolitics of infrastructures’ by bringing in a new type of infrastructure, complementing previous discussions on the geopolitics of traditional material infrastructures.

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基础设施平台的地缘政治：以阿里巴巴为例

摘要当代数字平台日益基础化，并随着其全球扩张而开始加剧地缘政治紧张局势。在美中地缘政治竞争加剧的情况下，中国基础设施平台的实力不断增强，使其成为最近地缘政治动态的中心。本文通过一个探索性的案例研究，讨论了中国最著名的互联网巨头之一阿里巴巴作为一个基础设施平台，并强调了其地缘政治斗争。阿里巴巴通常被视为一家电子商务公司，但它已经变得“基础设施化”：它现在庞大的数字帝国已经超越了电子商务，几乎扩展到了中国和全球数字经济的各个方面，如物流、金融、线下零售和云计算。本文追溯了阿里巴巴全球之旅中三个引人注目的案例——2017年与速汇金的交易失败、阿里云不均衡的全球之旅以及电子世界贸易平台的建设——来说明基础设施平台地缘政治的三个关键维度，即日常数据的地缘政治，可见-不可见张力的地缘政治，以及模块化的地缘政治。通过这样做，它有助于以下两个学术领域。一方面，它通过突出中国基础设施平台的地缘政治维度，为越来越多的关于“基础设施和平台”的文献做出了贡献。另一方面，它引入了一种新型的基础设施，补充了以往关于传统物质基础设施地缘政治的讨论，从而增加了关于“基础设施的地缘政治”的文献。

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

Information Communication & Society Multiple-

CiteScore

10.20

自引率

4.80%

发文量

110

期刊介绍： Drawing together the most current work upon the social, economic, and cultural impact of the emerging properties of the new information and communications technologies, this journal positions itself at the centre of contemporary debates about the information age. Information, Communication & Society (iCS) transcends cultural and geographical boundaries as it explores a diverse range of issues relating to the development and application of information and communications technologies (ICTs), asking such questions as: -What are the new and evolving forms of social software? What direction will these forms take? -ICTs facilitating globalization and how might this affect conceptions of local identity, ethnic differences, and regional sub-cultures? -Are ICTs leading to an age of electronic surveillance and social control? What are the implications for policing criminal activity, citizen privacy and public expression? -How are ICTs affecting daily life and social structures such as the family, work and organization, commerce and business, education, health care, and leisure activities? -To what extent do the virtual worlds constructed using ICTs impact on the construction of objects, spaces, and entities in the material world? iCS analyses such questions from a global, interdisciplinary perspective in contributions of the very highest quality from scholars and practitioners in the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, communication and media studies, as well as in the information and computer sciences.