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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Geopolitics Of Infrastructuralized Platforms: The Case Of Alibaba, Hong Shen, Yujia He
The Geopolitics Of Infrastructuralized Platforms: The Case Of Alibaba, Hong Shen, Yujia He
Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications
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 …
Censorship Sensing: The Capabilities And Implications Of China’S Great Firewall Under Xi Jinping, Emily Quan
Censorship Sensing: The Capabilities And Implications Of China’S Great Firewall Under Xi Jinping, Emily Quan
Sigma: Journal of Political and International Studies
Totaling over 989 million users at the end of 2020, Chinese Internet users interact with unprecedent amounts of data, communication, and media (Xu 2020). It is a far cry from 1987, when the first email was sent from China to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The message in the email, later popularized on QQ desktops, was this: “Across the Great Wall, we can reach every corner of the world” (越过长城，走向世 界, Yuèguò Chángchéng, Zouxiàng Shìjiè) (Internet Archive 2013).