Alibaba’s discourse for the digital Silk Road: the electronic World Trade Platform and ‘inclusive globalization’

Seoane, Maximiliano Vila

doi:10.1080/17544750.2019.1606838

Cited by 34 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Super platforms now have adjusted their development goals and made statements as building ‘social infrastructure’. For example, Facebook articulates its enterprise operation with tenets of free reading and human connections and aims to build a community that is supportive, safe, informed, civic engaged, and inclusive (Rider and Wood, 2019); Alibaba intends to build an electronic world trade platform though Belt and Road Initiative and thereby realize ‘inclusive globalization’ (Vila Seoane, 2019). What will be the motivations and contradictions underlying the platforms appropriate connotations of those rhetoric as ‘social’ or ‘infrastructure’ would be a new focus in academic discussions.…”

Section: Platformization and Infrastructuralization Of Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrastructuralization of Tik Tok: transformation, power relationships, and platformization of video entertainment in China

Zhang

2020

Media, Culture & Society

110

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The article contributes to complicate the issue of ‘infrastructuralization of platform’ through an empirical study on China’s video streaming platform, Tik Tok. It aims at exploring how video streaming platform will transform in its infrastructural process and changing powering relationships between different actors in the platform ecosystem. After scrutinizing its technique features, business model, platform discourse, and power relationships with government, it argues that the infrastructural process of Tik Tok is not only embodied in its transformation from an entertainment community to an integrated platform, including services in e-commerce, online education, propaganda, and tourism, but more in its growing power of indispensability entrenched in our society. The main argument will be elaborated in two layers: first, Tik Tok attains its power on commercial monetization, content distribution, and acquisition of data sources through its infrastructural ambition of building a ‘video encyclopedia’ that can be salable, ranked, and archived. Second, Tik Tok has started to engage in fields of propaganda and tourism for city branding in alignment with central and local government. Tik Tok thereby wins its legitimacy in content management and government in turn plays as a role of stakeholder sharing the dividend from its contribution for state’s development goals. Therefore, the article not only fills in the gap of a case study on infrastructural video streaming platform but also intends to highlight changing power relationships between government and platform in the process of infrastructuralization.

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Section: Platformization and Infrastructuralization Of Platformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrastructuralization of Tik Tok: transformation, power relationships, and platformization of video entertainment in China

Zhang

2020

Media, Culture & Society

110

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“…Most prominently, big US tech companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft (in short: “GAFAM”) hold a central position of power within the networks that shape the application layer of the Internet in many parts of the world. At the moment the only real competition on a global level comes from Chinese companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent—which also have been assigned an acronym, “BAT” (Jolly, 2021; Seoane, 2019).…”

Section: The Duality Of Global Decentralisation and Local Concentrati...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Centrality and power. The struggle over the techno‐political configuration of the Internet and the global digital order

Pohle

Voelsen

2022

Policy & Internet

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In recent years, various governments have been trying to subordinate the Internet to the system of the Westphalian state order. This article seeks to add a new layer to the analysis of this conflict over state sovereignty and the global digital order. It draws on network theory as an alternative analytical lens to study the reconfiguration of power relations that define the Internet as a technical, social and economic network, and its governance. We review key conflicts and developments that shaped the Internet's history, from the Internet exceptionalists' visions in the 1990s to states' recent pursuits of digital sovereignty and trace how states, as well as private companies, seek to fundamentally reconfigure the dominant logic of the Internet and its sub‐networks to expand and institutionalise their power position. We thus highlight a deeper layer of conflict: the current struggles over the techno‐political configuration of the Internet are not only influenced by the conflict between liberal and authoritarian visions of the Internet; they are also the result of continuous tensions between processes of centralisation and decentralisation of the Internet's technical foundations and its governance. As an effect of these dynamics, we currently witness a pluralisation of power while, at the same time, new points of centralised control emerge.

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“…Platforma Alibaba omogućuje interakciju korisnika na platformi odnosno koristi model ekonomije platformi (Parker i dr., 2016; Moazed i Johnson, 2016) te koristi poslovni model nultog marginalnog troška (Rifkin, 2015;Lozić, 2019a). Alibabin cilj bio je "olakšati poslovanje" bilo gdje korištenjem internetske tehnologije, a sa ciljem poboljšanja konkurentske prednost malih i srednjih poduzeća, otvarajući vrata za kineska mala i srednja poduzeća i potrošače kroz stvaranje platformi za e-trgovinu (Seoane, 2020). Ekosustav Alibaba, osim maloprodajnog sektora, obuhvaća i poslovne operacije povezane s putovanjima, bankarstvom, cloud uslugama i video streamingom (Haninen i dr., 2017).…”

Section: Uvodunclassified

“…Alibaba je ušla u povijest postavši najveća inicijalna javna ponuda na burzi u New Yorku, a početkom studenog 2018. imala je tržišnu kapitalizaciju od približno 380 milijardi dolara. Ove impresivne brojke objašnjavaju zašto uprava Alibabe tvrde da je tvrtka sama po sebi svojevrsna "ekonomija" s pola milijarde kupaca (Seoane, 2020). Stabilnost i poslovna učinkovitost u modelu ekonomije platformi temelji se na snazi mreže odnosno mrežnog efekta.…”

Section: Pregled Literatureunclassified

“…Osnivač i direktor Alibaba, Jack Ma, već je 2016. godine promovirao strategiju korporacije kao globalne platforme za online trgovinu, odnosno Elektronsku svjetsku trgovinsku platformu ("eWTP" -"electronic World Trade Platform") (u daljnjem tekstu eSTP). Dugoročni strategijski cilj projekta je omogućiti inkluzivniju globalizaciju više nego što je to bilo u prošlosti, a koristeći platformu i digitalnu infrastrukturu (Seoane, 2020). Temeljna djelatnost platforme i dalje je usmjerena na e-trgovinu, koja se može podijeliti na maloprodaju u Kini putem platformi Taobao i Tmall, veleprodajnu trgovinu u Kini s Alibabom, prekograničnu i globalnu maloprodaju putem Aliexpressa, Tmall global i Lazada te prekograničnu trgovinu i globalna veleprodaju putem engleskog portala Alibaba.…”

Section: Poslovni Model I Financijski Rezultat Poslovanjaunclassified

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Ekosustav Alibaba kao model poduzetničkog projekta

Lozić

Čiković

2022

Obraz. poduzet. - E4E (Online)

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Cilj rada je determinirati financijsku stabilnost i poslovnu strukturu ekosustava Alibaba te ukazati na mogućnosti koje platforma stvara poduzetnicima u Republici Hrvatskoj. Metodologija – rad je dizajniran kao deskriptivni opis nastanka i razvoja poduzetničkih i menadžerskih modela ekosustava Alibaba. U analizi poslovne strukture korištena su financijska izvješća korporacije, kao i znanstvena literatura koja se bavi analizom poslovnog modela ekosustava Alibaba. Rezultati istraživanja – ukazuju na transformaciju modela stvaranja prihoda te razvoj novih oblika poslovnih aktivnosti platforme. Korporacija je osnovana kao online maloprodajna platforma, ali se razvojem poslovnih aktivnosti transformirala u hibridni oblik ekonomije platformi. Zaključak – ekosustav Alibaba najveći dio prihoda ostvaruje iz maloprodajne online aktivnosti u Kini. Istovremeno, platforma se transformira prema hibridnom poslovnom modelu te značajno raste udio prihoda od poslovanja u oblaku. Šireći se izvan domicilnog tržište u Kini te razvijajući nove oblike usluga, platforma otvara mogućnosti za razvoj malih i srednjih poduzeća izvan Kine. U tom kontekstu, ekosustav Alibaba može postati poluga razvoja za mala i srednja poduzeća iz Republike Hrvatske kao i za razvoj gospodarske aktivnosti u uslužnim industrijama u Republici Hrvatskoj.

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Alibaba’s discourse for the digital Silk Road: the electronic World Trade Platform and ‘inclusive globalization’

Cited by 34 publications

References 26 publications

Infrastructuralization of Tik Tok: transformation, power relationships, and platformization of video entertainment in China

Infrastructuralization of Tik Tok: transformation, power relationships, and platformization of video entertainment in China

Centrality and power. The struggle over the techno‐political configuration of the Internet and the global digital order

Ekosustav Alibaba kao model poduzetničkog projekta

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