China/Europe and the Changing Global Order seminar series: The US-China Rivalry and the Emergence of State Platform Capitalism

China’s emergence and growing footprint across the world has spawned much debate on its implications for the global order. To analyse these debates and illuminate the underlying issues, The Open University’s 'Reorienting development: The dynamics and effects of Chinese infrastructure investments in Europe (REDEFINE)' project; the University of York’s 'The Politics of Chinese Investments in Europe (PoliCIE)'; and the China in Europe Research Network (CHERN) are co-organising this series of events. We envisage these events to offer a platform for learning and sharing for students and early career researchers in the social sciences and allied disciplines.

The series is informed by four themes, as below:

• To what extent does China’s growing presence in and engagement with the global North and global South reshape the liberal international order?
• What does China’s rise do for concepts like the global South and how can we more effectively study the political economies of societies of the so-called global South?
• What does China’s entry into Europe mean for European identity and how can we more effectively study the political economies of European societies?
• What methodological opportunities and challenges does researching China in Europe pose for collaborative knowledge creation?

Each event will typically entail a presentation by a graduate student or early career scholar followed by comments by an established academic.

Audience Q&A will follow

Register for the event via Eventbrite

Come along to our seminar on the 10th November from 12:30 to 14:00 (GMT) and hear Dr Steven Rolf from The University of Sussex and Dr Seth Schindler from The University of Manchester speak on:-

'The US-China Rivalry and the Emergence of State Platform Capitalism'

Abstract

This paper develops the notion of ‘state platform capitalism’ to explain the idiosyncrasies of the current conflagration between China and the US. First, we argue that the rise of digital platforms as the principal form business organisation concentrates power in two nation-states: the United States and China. This trend intersects with and reinforces pre-existing trends towards state capitalism, where states play considerably more active roles in managing their economies than before. And as digital platforms become entwined with national states, competition in the global political economy is increasingly becoming about recruiting users and nations to these rival state-platform nexuses (national ‘stacks’). Empirically, we identify two modes of practising state platform capitalism, evident in the US and China. Next, we examine three axes along which this stack competition plays out in third countries: currencies, standards, and cybersecurity