The Chaotic Process of Platform Economy and Platform Cities: The gender dynamics along the human-machine interface

This reflection of post-industrialization in Chinese cities commences by retracing the evolving image of modernity along the trajectory of human-machine interaction, spanning from the 1920s to the present day, focusing on gender dynamics. Starting with portraying modern women adept at operating sewing machines in the 1920s and extending to the contemporary phenomenon of the TikTok Goddess, Chinese women have consistently straddled the intersecting realms of multiple boundaries, including production versus reproduction and the public versus the private sphere. I will then move to the prevailing discourse surrounding the post-industrial economy, which heralds a new era characterized by a more women-friendly environment for career advancement, with the erosion of conventional borders and subsequently, new values of human capital centred on feminine aptitudes in communication. Following this, I engage in a critical examination of several economic models that appropriate women as a new productive force along the value chain, such as Taobao's real-time shopping, the fan economy, and the influencer-directed tourism industry, and analyze their impacts on urban spaces. My argument posits that the ongoing interplay between women and mechanized technology fosters diverse manifestations of self-discipline and self-motivation, as well as independence and network-based sociability. This interplay also gives rise to intricate class relationships that transcend Fuchs' delineation of Platform Rich and Platform Poor dichotomies.