Platform-mediated racialization: A case study of rural Chinese wig sellers and Black clients on Alibaba

Due to the rise of global e-commerce platforms like Alibaba, online interactions between rural Chinese wig sellers and Black clients are increasing. However, the racial implications of such platform-mediated business relations remain underexplored. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Xuchang, a leading distribution and export center for wigs products in the global supply chain, this research examines the active role of Alibaba in orchestrating, structuring, and shaping the racial knowledge formation of rural Chinese wig sellers in their daily online interactions with Black clients. We argue that the exploitative nature of platform capitalism creates stress and exhaustion among rural wig sellers and pushes them to draw narrow and hasty conclusions about Blackness that dovetail with racialized hierarchy in the global wig industry and logistics networks. This research bridges the gap between platform studies and critical race studies and contributes to the reconceptualization of relations between platform and race.