The geopolitics of infrastructuralized platforms: the case of Alibaba

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Geopolitics
• infrastructuralized platforms
• Alibaba
• Chinese Internet
• infrastructures
• platforms

Acknowledgements

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hong Shen

Hong Shen is an Assistant Research Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on the social and policy implications of digital platforms and algorithmic systems. She received her Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Email: [email protected]

Yujia He

Yujia He is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky. Her areas of expertise are international and comparative political economy, science and technology policy, and governance issues in the Asia Pacific region. Email: [email protected]