The politics of platformization: genealogy from administrative reform to platform governance

Platform studies have been dominated by analytical and evaluative frameworks attuned to Silicon Valley techno-capitalism. This article joins a growing body of work that unsettles this universalizing orientation by reconstructing an alternative trajectory of ‘platformization’ (pingtaihua): a governing rationale and technological enactment of power rooted in Chinese public administration, later transplanted into the regulation of private platforms across China’s vast digital landscape. I map the field of platform studies through the emic–etic distinction and its underlying political and empirical stakes. Adopting an emic approach that centers historical actors’ own vocabularies and agendas, the article reconstructs a synthetic historical account with ‘platforms’ (pingtai) and ‘platformization’ (pingtaihua) as its throughline. Drawing on informatics theorist Philip Agre’s concept of ‘capture’ – a notion increasingly diluted and distorted in analyses of digital capitalism – I foreground underexamined dynamics of power in Chinese platform governance while intervening in dominant etic frameworks for understaning Silicon Valley Big Tech.