Development Issues in Platform Economy in China Julie Yujie Chen woshihama Chinese University of Hong Kong DIODE Workshop May 2017 Indonesia Overview A workercentered remapping of the platform economy in China ID: 813177
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Slide1
Local Phenomenon or a New Trend?Development Issues in Platform Economy in China
Julie Yujie Chen (@woshihama)Chinese University of Hong Kong
DIODE Workshop (May 2017, Indonesia)
Slide2OverviewA worker-centered remapping of the platform economy in China
Characteristics of digital work in the platform economy in China Implications for development
Slide3Economic operations often facilitated by Internet-based and privately-owned platforms that allow people to rent out or exchange what they have (e.g., labor, time, assets, vehicle, knowledge, etc.) for what they may and want to get (e.g. money, experience, jobs, etc.).
Related to gig economy, “collaborative economy,” “on-demand economy,” “collaborative consumption,” or “peer-to-peer economy.”
Define platform
economy:
Slide4What’s about the digital (platform) economy in China?
Chinese Market
Potentials of less entrenched intellectual property rights enforcement and
s
ocialism and communism tradition
for more open and fairer Internet (Fuchs, 2016
)
Practices of file-sharing, hardware sharing, phone sharing, video downloading and sharing, etc.
Slide5Total market transactions on digital platforms: 3452 billion RMB in 2016 (approx. $500 billion)
Slide6Composition of consumers and work force in China’s Platform Economy (in millions)
Source: The
Ministry of Industry and Information and Technology of
China (2017)
Slide7Top 3 Platforms with largest number of participants (in millions)
Slide8A worker-centered remapping of the China’s platform economy
In 2013, 85% of Chinese work force were not protected by the 2005 comprehensive Labor Law.Structural precarity and the choice of staying informalNot inherently inferior to the formal employment
Chinese working class as information have-less (
Qiu
, 2009)
Slide9We ask:
How can we categorize the platform economy differently by taking into account of this labor-appropriation pattern and the reality of massive information have-less in China?What does it imply for the development of platform economy beyond China and for developing countries in general?
Slide10What happens when people participate in digital platforms?
platforms
A: Information
Have-more
B:
Information Have-less/working class
Slide11A remapping of Chinese platform economy
Platform
categorizations
Information have-more
Information have-less/working class
1. Have-more sharing/gig platform
Consumer
and worker
n/a
2. On-demand
service (by the have-less) platforms
Consumer participants
workers
3. Have-less
sharing practices
n/aConsumer and worker
4. P2P
and anonymous
sharing
Participants as prosumers
Slide12Category 1: Have-more sharing/gig platform
Have-more
Have-less
Property, assets,
knowledge, etc.
Very
l
imited
Personal property converts into micro-capital
n/a
Consumer
and worker
n/a
Knowledge and skills exchange (P2P consulting)
Ride-sharing, car-pooling
Short-term apartment-rentals and sharing
Slide13Have-more
Have-lessConsumption power
On-demand Labor
More
affordable service
income
Consumer
participants
workers
Category 2: On-demand
service (by the have-less) platform
Taxi-hailing platforms
Service-provision (errands, housekeeping,
etc
)
Crowdsourced logistic and last-mile delivery service
Slide14Have-more
Have-lessLimited
Consumption power and information
products
n/a
More affordable and wider
access to information & information products
n/a
Consumers
Category 3:
H
ave-less sharing practices (with platforms or without)
-Mobile
phone sharing among Hmong children (Zhang, 2012);
- Video-copying and sharing via smartphones from the Internet cafes and cell phone shops
Slide15Have-more
Have-lessInformation
and informational products
Information
and informational products
Access
Prosumers
Category 4:
P2P and anonymous sharing
- Resources sharing (
e.g
:
Mingyi
Zhudao
, Genshuixue.com)
- UGC sharing (e.g. Bilibili.com, Bullet curtain (comments embedded in the video sharing sites; foreign TV shows and movies subtitle translation and sharing site)
- E-book sharing (e.g. v-disk,
baidu
yun
)
Slide16Characteristics of digital work on the platform
How digital platforms operate is heterogeneous and shaped as much by established economic system, employment structure, and social institutions as by the power of algorithm-driven designs behind the platform.
E.g. Didi
Chuxing
—
a more aggressive model of user accumulation and labor exploitation than its Western counterparts.
Slide17Platformization of ride service on Didi
User’s interface of Didi
Taxi drivers were among the earliest users/laborers on Didi.
1.5 million registered taxi drivers (57.7% of all taxi drivers)
Slide18Characteristics of digital work on the platform
II. Digital divergent between the have-more and the have-less in their participation in the platform economy. Have-more are more likely to gain resources, build personal brand/online reputation, and upgrade skills.
H
ave-less are more likely to be entrapped in the low-wage, low-skilled occupations and hijacked by the platform. Little room for skill upgrading. Often under tight control for the work process.
Slide19Example #1: knowledge-sharing platform
Slide20Example #2: Food-delivery
Slide21tech adoptions ≠
a higher
income
Slide22Implications for development: Technologies
of counteraction
Bot Apps
Slide23Thank you!Twitter: @
woshihamaEmail: julieyj.chen@gmail.com
Slide24Reference
Botsman, R., & Rogers, R. (2010).
What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative
Consumption
.
New York:
HarperBusiness
.
Cartier, C., Castells, M., &
Qiu
, J. L. (2005). The Information Have-Less: Inequality, Mobility, and
Translocal
Networks in
Chinese
Cities.
Studies in Comparative
International
Development
,
40
(2), 9–34. http://
doi.org/10.1007/BF02686292
Castells, M., &
Portes
, A. (1989). World underneath: The origins, dynamics, and effects of the informal economy.
The informal
economy
: Studies in advanced and
less
developed
countries
.
University
of
Hertfordshire. 2016.
Crowd Working
Survey.
http
://
www.feps-europe.eu/assets/a82bcd12-fb97-43a6-9346- 24242695a183/crowd-working- surveypdf.pdf
Huang, Philip. (2013). “Reconsidering Chinese Workers”
Open Time
2013: Issue 5.
http
://www.opentimes.cn/bencandy.php?fid=371&aid=1753
Grey, M. (2016). “Your job is about to get ‘
taskified
,’”
Los Angeles Times.
January 8, 2016.
Ministry
of Industry and Information and Technology of China.
中国分享经济报告
.
2016.
Qiu, J. L. (2009). Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.
Sassen, S. (1999). Globalization and its discontents: Essays on the new mobility of people and money (Vol. 9). New York: New Press.Steinmetz, K. (2016, January 6). Exclusive: See How Big the Gig Economy Really Is.
Time. Retrieved from
http://time.com/4169532/sharing-economy-poll/
Zhang
, Q (2012).
Grassroots Media: The Construction of Resistance Identities in the Process Social Transformation.
(
Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Chinese
Academy
of Social Sciences, Beijing.
Slide25Me
June 30, Monday
Number of ride requests successfully intercepted; Time online
Please adjust the accelerated speed to intercept ride requests
The adjustable speed bar
Current speed: multiplier 32.0
Buttons for “Yes” and “Cancel”
QQ and telephone number
Exit
Didi
dache
More
Algorithmic activism