Deepening China’s Infrastructural Capitalism: The Hard Landing of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Automated Technology

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dc.contributor.authorPun, Ngai
dc.date.accessioned2025-06-16T15:00:25Z
dc.date.available2025-06-16T15:00:25Z
dc.date.issued2024-12-05
dc.description.abstractThis 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.
dc.description.sponsorshipThe Weizenbaum Institute is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
dc.identifier.citationPun, N. (2025). Deepening China’s Infrastructural Capitalism: The Hard Landing of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Automated Technology. Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.wjds/5.1.1
dc.identifier.doi10.34669/wi.wjds/5.1.1
dc.identifier.issn2748-5625
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/910
dc.identifier.zdb3064083-0
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherWeizenbaum Institute
dc.rightsopen access
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectChina
dc.subjectinfrastructural capitalism
dc.subjectlabor studies
dc.subjectclass theory
dc.titleDeepening China’s Infrastructural Capitalism: The Hard Landing of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Automated Technology
dc.typeArticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dcmi.typeText
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.issue1
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.journaltitleWeizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.originalpublisherplaceBerlin
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.volume5
local.series.nameThe Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society
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Vol. 5 No. 1 (2024)