IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v53y2021i2p266-280.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Open Sesame? The Paradoxical Development of C2C E-commerce in China

Author

Listed:
  • Ju Li

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the paradoxical development of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce in China by investigating three dimensions in its ecosystem: the rent extraction of the platform capital, the labor-intensive mini-enterprises under the demand-driven supply chain of e-commerce, and the widespread commodification and dispossession. I argue that its development has deepened and broadened the exploitative relationship among various forms of labor and capital. To a great extent, although the largely unregulated development of e-commerce has created more employment and provided opportunities for some previously marginalized places and social groups, especially during the early stage, it has quickly engendered malicious competition, notorious counterfeiting, and shrinking profits and bankruptcy for mini-merchants and mini-entrepreneurs, while on top of that a few huge monopolistic e-commerce platform companies have arisen and expanded rapidly. JEL classification : O11, O33, O53, P21

Suggested Citation

  • Ju Li, 2021. "Open Sesame? The Paradoxical Development of C2C E-commerce in China," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 266-280, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:53:y:2021:i:2:p:266-280
    DOI: 10.1177/0486613420964164
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0486613420964164
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0486613420964164?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlo Vercellone, 2008. "The new articulation of wages, rent and profit in cognitive capitalism," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00645055, HAL.
    2. Carlo Vercellone, 2008. "The new articulation of wages, rent and profit in cognitive capitalism," Post-Print halshs-00645055, HAL.
    3. Dan Schiller, 2000. "Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262692333, April.
    4. Carlo Vercellone, 2008. "The new articulation of wages, rent and profit in cognitive capitalism," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00265584, HAL.
    5. Kaoru Sugihara, 2007. "The Second Noel Butlin Lecture: Labour‐Intensive Industrialisation In Global History," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 47(2), pages 121-154, July.
    6. Harvey, David, 2007. "A Brief History of Neoliberalism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199283279.
    7. Harvey, David, 2005. "The New Imperialism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199278084.
    8. Carlo Vercellone, 2008. "The new articulation of wages, rent and profit in cognitive capitalism," Post-Print halshs-00265584, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emrah Karakilic, 2022. "Rentierism and the commons: A critical contribution to Brett Christophers’ Rentier Capitalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(2), pages 422-429, March.
    2. Claude Serfati, 2008. "Financial dimensions of transnational corporations, global value chain and technological innovation," Journal of Innovation Economics, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(2), pages 35-61.
    3. Spence, Crawford & Carter, David, 2011. "Accounting for the General Intellect: Immaterial labour and the social factory," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 304-315.
    4. Monnier Jean-Marie & Vercellone Carlo, 2014. "The Foundations and Funding of Basic Income as Primary Income," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1-2), pages 59-77, December.
    5. Ben Fine, Heesang Jeon, Gong H. Gimm, 2019. "Value is as Value Does: Twixt Knowledge and the World Economy," Fiscaoeconomia, Tubitak Ulakbim JournalPark (Dergipark), issue s1.
    6. Alfredo Macias Vazquez & Pablo Alonso Gonzalez, 2016. "Knowledge Economy and the Commons," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 48(1), pages 140-157, March.
    7. Jean-Marie Monnier & Carlo Vercellone, 2017. "Basic income as primary income [Le revenu de base comme revenu primaire]," Post-Print hal-01486202, HAL.
    8. Macías Vázquez, Alfredo & Alonso González, Pablo, 2015. "Collective symbolic capital and sustainability: Governing fishing communities in a knowledge economy," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 21-26.
    9. Rodrigo Alves Teixeira & Tomas Nielsen Rotta, 2011. "Modern Rent-Bearing Capital: New Enclosures, Knowledge-Rent and the Reproduction of Valueless Commodities," Anais do XXXVII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 37th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 008, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    10. Jean-Marie Monnier & Carlo Vercellone, 2017. "Basic income as primary income [Le revenu de base comme revenu primaire]," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01486202, HAL.
    11. Marson Korbi & Andrea Migotto, 2019. "Between Rationalization and Political Project: The Existenzminimum from Klein and Teige to Today," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 299-314.
    12. Jeffrey W. Henderson, 2008. "China and the Future of the Developing World: The Coming Global-Asian Era and its Consequences," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-58, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Pinkerton, Evelyn & Davis, Reade, 2015. "Neoliberalism and the politics of enclosure in North American small-scale fisheries," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 303-312.
    14. Ziad Koussa, 2023. "Revolution, Change, and Democratic Transition in Egypt Since 2011: A Critical Political Economy Approach," Contemporary Review of the Middle East, , vol. 10(2), pages 165-187, June.
    15. Emmanuel Kumi & Albert Arhin & Thomas Yeboah, 2014. "Can post-2015 sustainable development goals survive neoliberalism? A critical examination of the sustainable development–neoliberalism nexus in developing countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 539-554, June.
    16. Boisvert, Valérie, 2015. "Conservation banking mechanisms and the economization of nature: An institutional analysis," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 134-142.
    17. Neely, Megan Tobias & Carmichael, Donna, 2021. "Profiting on crisis: how predatory financial investors have worsened inequality in the coronavirus crisis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112697, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. John McSweeney, 2014. "The absence of class: Critical development, NGOs and the misuse of Gramsci’s concept of counter-hegemony," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 14(3), pages 275-285, July.
    19. Carlos Bueno-Suárez & Daniel Coq-Huelva, 2020. "Sustaining What Is Unsustainable: A Review of Urban Sprawl and Urban Socio-Environmental Policies in North America and Western Europe," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-36, May.
    20. Patrick J. Devlin, 2010. "Exploring efficiency's dominance: the wholeness of the process," Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(2), pages 141-162, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    C2C e-commerce; rent extraction; demand-driven supply chain; commodification; accumulation by dispossession;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • P21 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Planning, Coordination, and Reform

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:53:y:2021:i:2:p:266-280. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.