Date
Apr 22, 2024, 4:30 pm6:00 pm
Location
Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Details

Event Description
Over the years, Didi Chuxing, China’s equivalent of Uber, has been hailed as an icon of digital innovation and commercial miracle. Yet, along with its staggering market expansion, the company is also at the center of various controversies, including data safety, labor disputes, sexual harassment cases, and intensified traffic pollution and congestion. While the Chinese state largely turned a blind eye to all these controversies, it acted swiftly to discipline the company when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange, citing national and data security as the primary concern. How does a company expand so rapidly? Why does the state change its attitudes towards the company? Drawing upon multiple years of ethnography, including intensive interviews with Didi's employees, officials, industry players, university experts, and drivers, Angela Ke Li will narrate the corporate-state relationship beneath the ideology of techno-developmentalism.