Life before e-commerce can feel like a foreign country. For the ‘Chinamaxxing’ crowd, fresh meals and fancy gadgets delivered to your doorstep almost instantly, at astonishingly low prices, are among the country’s top draws. Yet these conveniences come with hidden costs, and China’s path to becoming an e-commerce giant has been far from certain.

How do digital platforms from Alibaba to Didi navigate shifting politics, and how have central and local governments responded to these ventures? Can internet-based businesses liberate and empower, or is the freedom to buy and sell ultimately a form of entrapment? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with business school professor Lizhi Liu and science and technology studies scholar Jack Linzhou Xing about the distinctive trajectories of China’s e-commerce giants, and the promises and pitfalls of the digital economy.