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ABSTRACT
Historically, capital has employed varied methods, both discursive and material, to bypass regulatory frictions. Regulatory arbitrage is one such corporate tactic; it leverages more favorable regulatory regimes in one jurisdiction or category to avoid stricter regulation in another, thus reducing regulatory costs. While regulatory arbitrage underpins much of the gig economy’s development, it has received scant attention in critical studies of digital media. Using mixed methods of documentary research and expert interviews, this article examines the regulatory arbitrage strategy that the Chinese social media giant ByteDance deploys in its global expansion and sheds light on the intricate tech politics occurring between the firm and national regulators. Rather than interpreting ByteDance’s global foray through the prevailing geopolitical lens, which often posits a simplistic, antagonistic framework, this article demonstrates how the firm manages and adapts its structure to exploit more lenient regulatory regimes outside of China, such as that in the US. This allows ByteDance to reach deeper into the global market and avoid potential breaches of China’s internal political economic control. Consequently, the article emphasizes the cunning, resilient nature of capital and the complexity and intricacies in global flows of capital, characteristics often overlooked in an increasingly geopolitically charged world, and it considers their implications for platform governance.
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Luzhou Li
Luzhou (Nina) Li is a senior lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Australia. Her research focuses on critical media industry studies, political economy of media, media policy and governance, and contemporary China. Her work has appeared in journals such as Media, Culture & Society, International Journal of Communication, and Television & New Media, and she is the author of Zoning China: Online Video, Popular Culture, and the State (MIT Press, 2019). Her work is supported by the Australian Research Council. She currently serves as the Chair of the Division of Communication Law and Policy in the International Communication Association.