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

Abstract

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 sys-tematically with developments in the United States (Jiang & Murmann, 2022). 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 (2022), is based in China and the second team, composed of Martin Kenney and Arie Y. Lewin (2022), 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.