Communication, Culture, and Governance in Asia | Toward Fragmented Platform Governance in China: Through the Lens of Alibaba and the Legal-Judicial System

Authors

  • Yu Hong Zhejiang University, Institute of Communication Research, Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication Research Center
  • Jian Xu the China Institute of Urban Governance in Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Keywords:

e-commerce, platform governance, China, intellectual property rights, counterfeiting, digital economy, legal studies

Abstract

By reviewing lawsuits against Alibaba, this article explores the evolving model of platform governance that expresses and constitutes the historical political economy of China’s Internet at large. It outlines the significance of platform immunity in legal cases and conceptualizes the construct as a common carrier of governance registering cross-scale, cross-unit, and cross-context concordance and discordance. Beyond the censorship imaginary that has conventionally defined China’s Internet governance, the article ultimately reveals a model of fragmented governance: a model that encompasses many moving parts, legal and administrative, authoritarian and mercantile, and across disjointed issue areas from speech to digital trade, from copyright to trademark—a model that sustains platform immunity as a common carrier, keeps alive power struggles among collective interests, makes haphazard institutional tweaking, and repeats regulatory compromises.

Author Biographies

Yu Hong, Zhejiang University, Institute of Communication Research, Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication Research Center

Young Professor Level A,Zhejiang University13777859097

Jian Xu, the China Institute of Urban Governance in Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Jiahua Professor at the China Institute of Urban Governance  in Shanghai Jiao Tong University

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Published

2019-09-14

Issue

Vol. 13 (2019)

Section

Special Sections

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