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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Johann Peter Murmann*
Affiliation:
University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
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Abstract

Type
Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The International Association for Chinese Management Research

In this section, 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, Reference Jiang and Murmann2022). 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 (Reference Ma, Mao and An2022), is based in China and the second team, composed of Martin Kenney and Arie Y. Lewin (Reference Kenney and Lewin2022), 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?

As you will find out, the two teams offer different perspectives. If after reading the two commentaries you believe that the authors have left out important causal factors behind the rise of China's digital economy or misconstrued their relative importance, we invite you to write a letter to the editor. For an example of such a letter, see Rengarajan's (Reference Rengarajan2019) contribution. We want to stimulate a debate on this important topic and are eager to publish additional perspectives.

References

REFERENCES

Jiang, H., & Murmann, J. P. 2022. The rise of China's digital economy: An overview. Management and Organization Review, 18(4): 790–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenney, M., & Lewin, A. Y. 2022. Semiconductor catch-up is not enough: Twigging the context of China's ambitions. Management and Organization Review, 18(4): 816–826.Google Scholar
Ma, C., Mao, J.-Y., & An, X.-P. 2022. The driving forces behind the phenomenal rise of the digital economy in China. Management and Organization Review, 18(4): 803–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rengarajan, S. 2019. Letter to the editor: Complementing the Tesla forum EV discussion with a view upstream. Management and Organization Review, 15(1): 201205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar