Institutional Arrangement, Technological Innovation and Application Evolution: The Rise of China’S Emerging Computing Infrastructure

This paper tries to explore the interaction of institutional arrangement, technological innovation and application evolution underlying the impressive growth of China’s computing infrastructure. Drawing upon the actor-network theory, we construct a framework to explain how the elements identified forge the evolution of the sector. Our study hopes to provide the analytical lens and explanatory power to probe this growth process under the emerging contexts. We conduct an in-depth case study on the growth of China’s emerging computing infrastructure to justify the framework. Chinese government has been deeply involved in the development of the computing infrastructures including the systems of supercomputing and cloud computing to build a nationwide computing backbone network. In the resent emerging of cloud computing, the networks which involved in much more diversified actors with heterogeneous interests are shaping under a more open setting. However, the facility-oriented strategies by the dominant state-owned players still exert great challenge to the cloud computing development which needs sustainable benefits generated from the infrastructure. Our paper tries to provide a systematic understanding on the growth of China’s emerging computing infrastructure and offer some important insights to the emerging industries in other large emerging countries.