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Global Financialization and Local Labour Acquisition in China's Platform Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2024

Hao Zhang Open the ORCID record for Hao Zhang [Opens in a new window]
Hao Zhang*
Affiliation:
Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
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Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The emergence of digital platforms has been viewed in scholarly narratives as a “technological fix” of global capital, to use Beverly Silver's classic term. That is, capital continues to devise innovative strategies to restructure the labour process and avoid employer legal liabilities. This study reveals an important but somewhat overlooked “financial fix” aspect of the platform economy. Through a case study of a Chinese food delivery platform, the author shows that global speculative capital and its cash-burning games have generated a form of market-value fetishism in this sector. In response, platform companies have devised innovative labour acquisition strategies to expand their market share that have profoundly shaped the work and employment dynamics within the sector. In particular, the platform companies engaged in a subsidy rivalry with their competitors in order to attract crowdsourcing/gig workers for their regular services and at the same time established a highly structured subcontracting system to secure a more reliable and committed workforce to target the relatively high-end consumer market. The author argues that the interaction between global financialization and local capital's strategic choices accounts for the peculiar structure and employment dynamics in the Chinese platform economy.

摘要

摘要

数字平台的崛起在学术叙事中被视为全球资本的一种——以贝弗里⋅西尔弗的经典概念来概括——“技术调整”策略，即资本通过持续开发创新策略来重构劳动过程并逃避其雇主义务。本研究揭示了平台经济的一个重要但常被忽略的“金融调整”的侧面。通过对一家中国外卖平台的案例研究，作者发现全球投机资本以及它们的“烧钱”策略在这一行业创造了一种“市值崇拜”的价值观。平台企业因此设计出了创新的劳动力获取策略以扩大其市场份额，这又深刻地影响了行业中的工作和就业状况。特别是，平台企业同其竞争者通过补贴大战来吸引零工众包工人，同时又建立了一个高度结构化的承包系统来确保获得一支更加稳定和忠诚的劳动力队伍，以服务于相对高端的市场。作者认为：全球金融化和地方资本的策略选择的互动解释了中国平台经济所特有的组织结构和雇佣张力。

Keywords

platform economygig workfinancializationlabour acquisitionChina平台经济零工工作金融化劳动力获取中国
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 259 , September 2024 , pp. 785 - 803
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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