Professor Murmann's Blog: Forum on ‘The Rise of China’s Digital Economy’

Forum on ‘The Rise of China’s Digital Economy’

In this forum, we present three essays that collectively seek to document and explain the rise of China’s digital economy. The first essay written by Hong Jiang – who is based in China – and myself – who is based in the West – focuses on documenting the rise of China’s digital economy by comparing it systematically with developments in the United States (Jiang & Murmann, 2022). This first essay intentionally says relatively little about the causes driving the rise so that the two invited teams of commentators could focus on reasons behind the growth of e-commerce and internet services in China. The first team, composed of Chong Ma, Ji-Ye Mao, and Xiao-Peng An (2022), is based in China and the second team, composed of Martin Kenney and Arie Y. Lewin (2022), is based in the United States. Both teams were provided with the opening essay and a set of questions to stimulate a debate about causes.

• Is the increasing strength of these digital sectors intimately tied to government policies? If so, how?
• Is the fact that China is much more lax about privacy a critical reason for the advances in China?
• Will China overtake the US in these digital services or will the fast growth slowdown?
• On the assumption that the geopolitical struggles between China and the US continue to rise, what, if any implications will this have for the further development of e-commerce and digital services companies in China and the US?
• The Chinese government recently has made it more difficult for Chinese firms to list on US stock exchanges; will this have a negative impact?

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