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Short abstract:

With the case of Didi, the largest ride-hailing platform in China, we explore the widely circulated myths associated with digital platforms on both individual and firm levels, and highlight the importance of such mythology to the development and maintenance of the platform economy.

Long abstract:

The platform economy is generally understood as an advanced technological innovation typically associated with reason. This study, however, examines the role of mythology in shaping the platform economy in China. Via long-term fieldwork and document analysis related to China’s ride-hailing platform, Didi, we explore widely circulated myths associated with the platform on both individual and firm levels, represented by the narratives that 1) individual workers grabbing the opportunity to work on the platform become rich, and that 2) a platform with advanced technologies will ultimately be profitable and sustainable through being listed in the stock market. These narratives sharply contradict Didi’s development trajectory, which is full of contingency and crises, but they are an important component of Didi’s development and maintenance. Compared with the myths about gambling in China, a similar set of narratives about people’s understanding of and tensions between hard work, risk and precarity, and future well-addressed by anthropological literature, the current platform myths are uniquely shaped by two factors: first, modernistic, teleological, and western-centric imaginary which equalizes hi-tech and global capital directly to success and progress; second, the heightened developmental anxiety in both individual and social levels in China, further exacerbated by the tense geopolitical atmosphere in the Asia-Pacific rim. Through this study, we suggest that the analytical lens of mythology enables us to better understand how technological innovations enabled by global capitalism are interwoven with the existing historical and cultural frames and volatile economic, social, and geopolitical conditions, especially in the inter-Asia area.