From Medallion to Data: Corporate-State Relationship in China’s Digital Industry

Name: From Medallion to Data: Corporate-State Relationship in China’s Digital Industry
Start: 2024-04-22T16:30:00-04:00
End: 2024-04-22T18:00:00-04:00
Location: Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

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Lecture

Mon, Apr 22, 2024

4:30 PM – 6 PM EDT (GMT-4)

Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

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Over the years, Didi Chuxing, China’s equivalent of Uber, has been hailed as an icon of digital innovation and commercial miracle. Yet, along with its staggering market expansion, the company is also at the center of various controversies, including data safety, labor disputes, sexual harassment cases, and intensified traffic pollution and congestion. While the Chinese state largely turned a blind eye to all these controversies, it acted swiftly to discipline the company when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange, citing national and data security as the primary concern. How does a company expand so rapidly? Why does the state change its attitudes towards the company? Drawing upon multiple years of ethnography, including intensive interviews with Didi's employees, officials, industry players, university experts, and drivers, Angela Ke Li will narrate the corporate-state relationship beneath the ideology of techno-developmentalism.

Where

Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Speakers

Angela Ke Li

Angela Ke Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore and a Fung Global Fellow in Princeton University (2023-2024).

She gained her B.A. in history from Peking University, M.Phil. in communications from Hong Kong Baptist University, and Ph.D. in communications and media studies from the Institute of Communication Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Her research primarily centers on digital economies, and the mutual shaping of technology and society, drawing upon a variety of fields, including media studies, cultural studies, labor studies, science and technology studies, China studies, sociology, and anthropology. In particular, She is an ethnographer, conducting fieldwork in multiple sites, such as newsrooms, internet companies, and streets. In addition, her research also uses a wide range of qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, textual analysis, and policy analysis, etc.

Her publications have appeared in various journals, for example, New Media & Society(*2), Information, Communication & Society, International Journal of Communication, Journalism, Journalism Studies, and China Perspectives.

She is a recipient of several competitive fellowships, either internally or externally: Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation(2019-2020), Fung Global Fellowship from Princeton University (2023-2024), NUS-Asian Research Institute Book Manuscript Fellowship (2023-2024), NUS HSS Faculty Research Fellowship (2024-2025), and NUS FASS Faculty Writing Fellowship (2024-2025).

Hosted By

Center on Contemporary China | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Fung Global Fellows Program, PIIRS, Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Center on Contemporary China (OWNER)