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Capital accumulation and work in China’s internet content industry: Struggling in the bubble

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Bingqing Xia
Bingqing Xia*
Affiliation:
East China Normal University, China
*
Bingqing Xia, School of Communication, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Minhang, Shanghai 200241, China. Email: yummexia@163.com
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Abstract

Since 2015, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (the so-called BAT) have constructed an empire in the Chinese Internet content industry via mergers and acquisitions. However, little is known about how professional Internet workers are experiencing this process of accumulation and consolidation. This article focuses on how social relations are reconfigured and subsumed in the capital accumulation process in the realm of the Internet content industry, using the Chinese case. It argues that fresh graduates are subsumed into the accumulation process as immaterial resources in the circulation of capital. It also offers a general critique of the capital accumulation process, as it shifts risks and costs of failure on to independent start-ups entering the industry.

Keywords

P34O3Z1BATcapital accumulationChinese Internetstart-upsworkers’ experiences
Type
Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 29 , Issue 4: Symposia: Global Financial Crisis 10 Years On; Full Employment White Paper , December 2018 , pp. 501 - 520
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2018

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