“Simply put, they have too much power,” US Congressman David Cicilline said of American Big Tech in a 2020 congressional hearing. That same year the Chinese government announced new regulations forcing Chinese company Alibaba to cancel its affiliate Ant Group’s listing on the stock market. China later ordered Ant Group’s financial activities to be terminated, leaving only its e-payments business intact.
These tussles between states and corporations represent a complex interplay between the world’s most powerful actors. Tech giants help define their home countries’ mix of nationalism and globalism. They are bishops in their states’ strategic and long-term chess game for world power. However, tech giants also challenge their states’ power and contribute to polarisation in their home countries.
The battle rages not only between corporations and their home states. The US denied some Chinese enterprises access to the US market – a well-known example is its ban of Huawei, to block its development of 5G technology. Meanwhile, the US put pressure on other countries to follow suit and exclude Chinese businesses from their markets.
