The Platform State: How China Governs Innovation to Achieve Tech Supremacy

East Asian Legal Studies Talk:

Angela Huyue Zhang
Professor of Law
University of Southern California, Gould School of Law

Professor Zhang will discuss “The Platform State: How China Governs Innovation to Achieve Tech Supremacy,” her current joint project with S. Alex Yang, Professor of Management Science and Operations at London Business School.

China’s innovation economy presents a puzzle.  In recent years, the country has emerged as a leader in fields ranging from advanced manufacturing to artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Yet technological success has not consistently translated into financial success for Chinese firms. Across many high-tech sectors, even leading companies operate on razor-thin margins, while others incur substantial losses.

To resolve this puzzle, this talk conceptualizes China as a “platform state” that governs innovation by orchestrating an ecosystem composed largely of relatively autonomous yet highly interdependent firms. This model of governance follows three strategic principles that make China resemble a platform company: prioritizing ecosystem orchestration over picking winners, embedding control in key interfaces alongside selective ownership, and scaling first and capturing value later.  While China is not the first to adopt platform strategy to spur innovation, it stands apart in combining strong state capacity and domestic scale needed to cultivate a vast innovation ecosystem with substantial discretion over how its gains are distributed and deployed.

Law is central to the platform state model, enabling experimentation and expansion while maintaining order in the innovation ecosystem. By shifting the unit of analysis from individual firms to the ecosystem as a whole, the platform-state framework advances a new organizational theory of state capitalism and broadens the conventional scope of industrial policy. It also offers a more nuanced account of Chinese institutions and contributes to a richer understanding of the functions of law in China.

Angela Huyue Zhang is Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, where she writes and teaches at the intersection of law, technology, and geopolitics. Her research examines the institutional dynamics of regulation and governance, with a current focus on the U.S.–China tech rivalry and the global regulation of artificial intelligence. Zhang is the author of two award-winning books: Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2021) and High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy (Oxford University Press, 2024). Prior to joining USC, Zhang taught at the University of Hong Kong, NYU School of Law, and King’s College London. Earlier in her career, Zhang practiced law for six years in Asia, the United States, and Europe. Zhang received her LLB from Peking University and her LLM, JD, and JSD from the University of Chicago Law School.

A light lunch will be served. Please register here.

A Harvard ID is required in order to enter Harvard Law School buildings. If you have questions, please contact eals@law.harvard.edu in advance of the event.

Co-sponsored by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.