{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title":"State Platform Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781009619714","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","id":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","uuid":"d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title":"State Platform Capitalism","normalized_title":"stateplatformcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781009619714","isbns":["9781009619714","9781009446594","9781009446587"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":98,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/State%20Platform%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/d06b946b-6924-4f30-afbd-92f915edbae4/search"},"page":{"printed_page":62,"pdf_page":67,"physical_index":67,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"dc7cf87fdd102c310dba00a966aed6b1013faf06bf573a1a54862f923825a919"},"chapter":"Cambridge Elements","content":"Scholars have questioned whether smart city systems built by Chinese firms are genuinely more likely to engender authoritarian governance regimes than technology from their competitors based in the OECD. In reality, governments tend to rely on a range of stakeholders to incrementally deliver smart city technologies into built environments. Rather than contract a Chinese firm to build a ‘whole-system’ smart city, most cities integrate a patchwork of interlocking systems that evolve over time that include software and hardware from numerous firms. Various systems (e.g. traffic monitoring, facial recognition systems, smart energy management) are provided by ‘combinations of Chinese, local, and even foreign actors [that] have participated in the initiation, definition of requirements, technological design, implementation, management and operation, and upgrade of the projects’ (Facundo Vila Seoane and Morena Álvarez Velasco, 2024, 155). All of these have the potential to support potentially authoritarian ends, regardless of their state of origin.\n\nChinese firms have principally captured a significant share of the smart cities market because oftheir competitiveness. Far from engaging in nefarious authoritarian forms of solidarity, Chinese firms are simply responding to demand from clients – some of whom may have authoritarian aspirations (He, 2024; Majerowicz and de Carvalho, 2024). A more serious criticism is Chinese platforms firms is that they can establish monopoly positions that crowd out local tech firms and inhibit learning-by-doing as they become embedded in urban software systems (Hinane El-Kadi, 2024). And in their efforts to rapidly expand, Chinese firms receive significant support from the state. This includes preferential financing and bundling with hard infrastructure provisioning, as well as access to public funding for research and development.\n\nAlibaba’s activity in Kuala Lumpur is illustrative of these dynamics. It initially focused on a series of investments in discrete systems, such as cloud computing and digital logistics management. These were integrated under the Electronic World Trade Platform, whose purpose was to facilitate access to markets and value chains for small and medium-sized enterprises. This has subsequently evolved into a comprehensive smart city initiative called City Brain, that Alibaba first pioneered in Hangzhou. It integrates a series of platforms, facilitating customs clearance and logistics, as well as digital traffic management and ‘the transplantation of Alibaba’s entire range of cloud-based solutions’ (Naughton, 2020a). Importantly, Alibaba’s City Brain embeds Chinese digital platforms within Malaysian infrastructure, and this, more than the potential for abuse by autocrats, is what worries US strategists.\n\nPlatform initiatives toward integration of numerous disparate systems into a single citywide smart city supersystem that includes software, hardware and infrastructure, heightens security risk by expanding the ‘attack surface’ open to hostile agents. A report jointly issued by cybersecurity services of the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand explains:\n\n62\n\nReinventing Capitalism","previous_page":61,"next_page":63}