Vol. 5 No. 1 (2024)

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China’s Deepening Infrastructural Capitalism: The Hard Landing of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Automated Technology
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2024-12-05) Pun, Ngai
This paper explores the rise of China’s infrastructural capitalism, a stage of global capitalism marked by state-led infrastructure development and the advent of digital platforms. Drawing on political economy and cultural studies, the author frames the current artificial intelligence and big data race between China and the United States as a new Cold War driven not by ideology but by competing capitalist logics. China’s model is seen as a response rather than an alternative to the limits of neoliberal capitalism, merging extractive, industrial, and digital forms of capital. The paper emphasizes the contradictions inherent in this system, particularly the exploitation of labor and environmental degradation. At the center of the analysis lies the concept of the “infrastructural power of labor,” which highlights how various worker subjects (e.g., factory, logistics, platform, and data laborers) are both shaped by and shape infrastructural capitalism. The paper calls for renewed attention to labor struggles and solidarity in the face of growing precarity in the artificial intelligence and automation-driven economy.