This chapter traces the incredibly rapid expansion of the platform e-commerce and financial conglomerates Alibaba and Ant Group. It shows how they took advantage of government fragmentation and dependence on the private economy to attract huge foreign investment, using the variable interest entity (VIE) legal loophole, and then to diversify into payment services (Alipay) and finance in conjunction with state financial institutions, attracting hundreds of millions of customers and tens of millions of SME merchants. The chapter analyzes the key struggles between this Alibaba/Ant "corporate ecosystem" and government regulators seeking to protect consumers, finding that reports of a reining in of Chinese private firms by the Chinese Communist Party are premature.

In this chapter, I explain how Systems Thinking can be applied to increase our perception of modern corporate groups and control mechanisms. The outcome is the notion of groups being more than the sum of the participating legal entities due to internal coordination and strategy, where all relative modes of control are taken into consideration. Group systems are analyzed through their nodes and the quality of their links, where the full representation stems from the process of emergence. I showcase the application of Systems Thinking by taking a closer look at the personal control structure of Alibaba.

This chapter builds on the understanding of fuzzy logic regulatory practice, but re-focuses on the main topic of the book: the policy contradictions between the emergence of a seemingly more restrictive cyber regime in China since 2014 and simultaneous announcements of new top-down policies for encouraging entrepreneurial activity. It argues that China’s data and cyber security laws cannot be understood without first understanding both the Chinese government’s Informatisation drive (which includes the Internet Plus policy) and the concept of Network Sovereignty. The chapter is also necessary to understand China’s unique system of governance that is well suited to promote innovations proposed by private Chinese tech companies.

This chapter explains the extent of fuzzy logic law surrounding the legal structure of technology companies in China. The chapter provides a profound illustration of the environment in which Chinese entrepreneurs must operate and remains an ongoing story. From the outset, Chinese technology entrepreneurs must decide how to legally structure their companies in order to account for vague conceptions of legality.

The past five years have seen a remarkable rise of entrepreneurial companies in digital technology. Chapter 5 examines this phenomenon through several case studies of e-commerce firms from various emerging economies: Alibaba (China), Flipkart (India), Jumia (Nigeria), and Mercado Libre (Argentina). It probes the business models aligned with the local environments these firms have honed, resulting in innovations such as pay-on-delivery, as well as different logistics and modes of delivery. It investigates the extent to which these firms have proven disruptive in their respective markets, their ability to expand regionally or globally, and future prospects.

Achieving acceptance of Chinese-made products by developed markets is a major challenge faced by Chinese firms. This chapter examines the perception of China and Chinese-made products in overseas markets and its psychological resistance, paying special attention to the unfavourable made-in-China image. In addition to recognizing the evidence-based negative perceptions, the psycho-social motivations that may give rise to a biased perception against made-in-China are also examined. The chapter then discusses emerging studies that uncover that culturally open and world-minded consumers are less susceptible to these attitudes, pointing to ways that the bias against Chinese brands and products can be revised. Finally, the chapter discusses the success of some Chinese firms (e.g., Alibaba) and their favourable spillovers on perceptions of Chinese firms and their products.