State Platform Capitalism

The United States, China, and the Global Battle for Digital Supremacy

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Global capitalism is being reshaped by two major trends. States have become increasingly interventionist, reshaping their economies in response to crises and geopolitical tensions. Secondly, digital platform giants have emerged from the US and China that concentrate political economic power in private hands. This Element argues that these trends are increasingly symbiotic. Digital platforms are being folded into the spiralling rivalry between the US and China. As states tap into their extraterritorial governance capacities by exerting control over platforms, platform firms leverage state support to pursue and expand their internationalization strategies. Therefore, the US-China rivalry is increasingly being fought at the level of the technology stack, a dynamic the authors call state platform capitalism. The Element examines four fields in which this novel regime of competition is at play: digital currencies, technical standards, cyber security, and smart cities. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.