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Lizhi Liu discussed her new book publication From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China (Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2024). Liu's book examines the ways in which governments strategically outsource tasks of institutional development and enforcement to digital platforms—a process she calls “institutional outsourcing”—in order to build vital institutions for market development.
In merely two decades, China built from scratch a two-trillion-dollar e-commerce market, with 800 million users, 70 million jobs, and nearly 50% of global online retail sales. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Liu argues, this market boom occurred because of weak government institutions, not despite them. Gaps in government institutions compelled e-commerce platforms to build powerful private institutions for contract enforcement, fraud detection, and dispute resolution. For a surprisingly long period, the authoritarian government acquiesced, endorsed, and even partnered with this private institutional building despite its disruptive nature. Drawing on a plethora of interviews, original surveys, proprietary data, and a field experiment, Liu shows that the resulting e-commerce boom had far-reaching effects on China.
Liu presented her book in a talk moderated by Abraham Newman.
This academic seminar was jointly sponsored by the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and the Department of Government.
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Lizhi Liu is an assistant Professor in the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Her research specializes in the politics of trade, technology and innovation, and the political economy of China. Her work has been published by the American Economic Review: Insights, Studies in Comparative International Development, Minnesota Law Review, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press. Liu hold degrees in political science (Ph.D.), statistics (M.S.), and international policy studies (M.A.) from Stanford University and international relations (LLB) from Renmin University of China.
Abraham Newman is a professor in the School of Foreign Service and Government Departments at Georgetown University and serves as the director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies. His research focuses on the ways in which economic interdependence and globalization have transformed international politics. He is the co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Holt/Penguin 2023), Of Privacy and Power: the Transatlantic Struggle over Freedom and Security (Princeton University Press 2019), Voluntary Disruptions: International Soft Law, Finance, and Power (Oxford University Press: 2018), author of Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Data in the Global Economy (Cornell University Press: 2008), and co-editor of How Revolutionary was the Digital Revolution: National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technologies (Stanford University Press: 2006).