Join getAbstract to access the summary!

From Click to Boom

Join getAbstract to access the summary!

From Click to Boom

The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China

Princeton UP,

15 min read
8 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Chinese companies and consumers have been quick to embrace e-commerce.

  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Background
  • Hot Topic

Recommendation

China has emerged as a global leader in e-commerce, and in this robust study, professor Lizhi Liu delves into the rise of the sector, particularly into the role of the Chinese state. Before 2020, Liu reports, Beijing mostly ignored the sector, leaving it to companies such as Alibaba to police themselves. China’s homegrown players responded by creating consumer protections that fostered the growth of online sales. Since 2020, however, China has cracked down on e-commerce platforms that overreach. Based on Liu’s own consumer research in China, this book offers new insights into a globally consequential corner of the economy.

Summary

China holds an outsized role in the e-commerce space.

China is the globe’s largest e-commerce market, accounting for nearly half of worldwide online retail sales. For perspective, China makes up just 13% of overall global consumption. The Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma summed up the situation this way: “In the US, e-commerce is the dessert, but in China, it is the main course.” As Chinese consumers flock toward online sales, e-commerce’s effects have rippled throughout the economy, most tellingly in the disappearance of cash. Most Chinese consumers use digital payments, to the extent that Chinese panhandlers now use QR codes. When a group of out-of-town robbers descended on Hangzhou for a crime spree, their holdups at three convenience stores netted just $260. The criminals didn’t realize how little cash circulated in the city.

The rise of China’s successful online marketplace is unexpected in some respects. For instance, the conventional wisdom holds that a vibrant new industry can emerge only in political economies that provide the underpinnings of property rights, contract enforcement, and the rule of law. In online transactions, in particular, the rule of law seems...

About the Author

Lizhi Liu is an assistant professor in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. She holds degrees in political science, statistics, and international policy studies from Stanford University and in international relations from Renmin University of China.
 

Comment on this summary