7 January 2025
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
The Rural Reinvention:
SOFIA LEONI
Politecnico di Torino
Respondent: Gianni Talamini, City University of Hong Kong
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Photo by Sofia Leoni, shot during fieldwork on March 15, 2024. This image captures a local advertisement promoting e-commerce entrepreneurship in rural Junpucun. The phenomenon of rural e-commerce growth, exemplified by Taobao villages, has been strongly encouraged through targeted marketing strategies. Some of the slogans include: Tired of life as a migrant worker? Why not come home and work on Taobao.com?” “You can run a store online and it won’t affect your personal life.” “Visit Taobao if you want to live a better life.”
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China’s Two Tropical Architectures:
ZHIJIAN SUN
National University of Singapore
Respondent: Yiping Dong, Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University
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Collage showing socialist China's two tropical architectures in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and in Guangzhou, China
8:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM CET
DocTalks x MoMA
The Rural Reinvention:
Emerging Taobao Villages and the Infrastructural Modification of the Invisible China
SOFIA LEONI
Politecnico di Torino
Respondent: Gianni Talamini, City University of Hong Kong
Photo by Sofia Leoni, shot during fieldwork on March 15, 2024. This image captures a local advertisement promoting e-commerce entrepreneurship in rural Junpucun. The phenomenon of rural e-commerce growth, exemplified by Taobao villages, has been strongly encouraged through targeted marketing strategies. Some of the slogans include: Tired of life as a migrant worker? Why not come home and work on Taobao.com?” “You can run a store online and it won’t affect your personal life.” “Visit Taobao if you want to live a better life.”
In recent years, China’s e-commerce revolution has expanded beyond urban centers, integrating remote regions into the country’s economic and political framework. This profound shift addresses the “three rural issues” identified in 2006: declining agricultural productivity, the widening urban-rural divide, and insufficient rural infrastructure and services. By combining national policies with localized implementation, these challenges have catalyzed a unique form of urbanization, often shaped by the interplay of public and private initiatives.
At the forefront of this transformation are Taobao villages, a grassroots revitalization model enabled by Alibaba’s C2C, e-commerce platform. Predominantly located in less developed coastal and central regions, these villages have experienced significant economic and spatial transformations driven by digital commerce. To qualify as a Taobao village, at least 10% of households—or a minimum of 100 shops—must engage in online trade, generating annual revenues exceeding CNY 10 million. This integration of e-commerce has disrupted traditional economic systems while reshaping spatial practices and mobility infrastructures. For instance, streets are frequently appropriated as informal public spaces, adapting organically to the demands of commerce and community life.
This research investigates the infrastructural and socio-economic changes occurring in Taobao villages through a multi-scalar approach that bridges spatial analysis and infrastructural studies, with a particular focus on logistics and the informal dynamics underpinning platform economies. Fieldwork conducted in three case studies—Junpucun in Guangdong Province (specialized in clothing and leather goods), Wuchuchen in Zhejiang Province (focused on tea and bamboo), and Dongfeng in Jiangsu Province (producing furniture and “fake Ikea” products)—uncovers how digital platforms facilitate new forms of entrepreneurship and spatial organization while simultaneously reshaping traditional rural identities.
The findings reveal a dual reinvention of rural labor and space. On one hand, traditional socio-economic structures are adapting to accommodate new entrepreneurial practices tied to global supply chains. On the other, digital infrastructures are reframing the role of logistics, relying heavily on human labor and localized knowledge to sustain platform ecosystems. These dynamics highlight the coexistence of modern and traditional systems, challenging binary perceptions of urban versus rural. At the same time, the study calls for a pluralized understanding of rural areas as spaces of negotiation and hybridity, where old and new forms of infrastructure, labor, and spatial practices intersect. By doing so, it sheds light on how rural China actively participates in global economic processes, redefining itself as a dynamic and adaptive entity in the digital era.
At the forefront of this transformation are Taobao villages, a grassroots revitalization model enabled by Alibaba’s C2C, e-commerce platform. Predominantly located in less developed coastal and central regions, these villages have experienced significant economic and spatial transformations driven by digital commerce. To qualify as a Taobao village, at least 10% of households—or a minimum of 100 shops—must engage in online trade, generating annual revenues exceeding CNY 10 million. This integration of e-commerce has disrupted traditional economic systems while reshaping spatial practices and mobility infrastructures. For instance, streets are frequently appropriated as informal public spaces, adapting organically to the demands of commerce and community life.
This research investigates the infrastructural and socio-economic changes occurring in Taobao villages through a multi-scalar approach that bridges spatial analysis and infrastructural studies, with a particular focus on logistics and the informal dynamics underpinning platform economies. Fieldwork conducted in three case studies—Junpucun in Guangdong Province (specialized in clothing and leather goods), Wuchuchen in Zhejiang Province (focused on tea and bamboo), and Dongfeng in Jiangsu Province (producing furniture and “fake Ikea” products)—uncovers how digital platforms facilitate new forms of entrepreneurship and spatial organization while simultaneously reshaping traditional rural identities.
The findings reveal a dual reinvention of rural labor and space. On one hand, traditional socio-economic structures are adapting to accommodate new entrepreneurial practices tied to global supply chains. On the other, digital infrastructures are reframing the role of logistics, relying heavily on human labor and localized knowledge to sustain platform ecosystems. These dynamics highlight the coexistence of modern and traditional systems, challenging binary perceptions of urban versus rural. At the same time, the study calls for a pluralized understanding of rural areas as spaces of negotiation and hybridity, where old and new forms of infrastructure, labor, and spatial practices intersect. By doing so, it sheds light on how rural China actively participates in global economic processes, redefining itself as a dynamic and adaptive entity in the digital era.
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China’s Two Tropical Architectures:
Climate, Thermal Technocracy,
and Global Socialism in
Guangzhou and Dar es Salaam, 1955-76
ZHIJIAN SUN
National University of Singapore
Respondent: Yiping Dong, Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University
Collage showing socialist China's two tropical architectures in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and in Guangzhou, China
This paper offers a critical understanding on the entanglement between environmental history, built environment and geo-politics, by scrutinizing socialist China’s engagements in the built environment of the decolonizing tropical world, which is still marginal to existing narratives on tropical architecture around the (post-)colonial network and global socialism. Based on archival research and fieldwork in China, Tanzania and the UK, it reveals the concurrency and coconstitution between knowledge production and practice of China’s two tropical architectures in the mid-to-late 20th century, i.e. its overseas architectural aid in the decolonizing Tanzania (one of the largest but unnoticed African recipients of China’s aid), and its subtropical modernist architecture in Maoist Guangzhou (a stronghold for China’s subtropical building research), and thus how the Chinese socio-cultural construction of the tropics challenges established discourses on global tropical architecture. Instead of attributing architectural production merely to the genius of certain individuals, it attends to a much broader framework of socialist state-run institutions operating both within and beyond China, in which not only architects and planners, but also meteorologists, physicians, thermal engineers and Party cadres were all active agents for global flows of resources and knowledge. Drawing on theories of techno-political regimes and critical temperature studies, it develops the notion of “thermal regimes” to capture the interdependence between the use of thermal technologies and institutions of socio-political power. Through case studies of Guangzhou Textile Factory (1958) and China-aided Friendship Textile Mill (1968), it scrutinizes how an interlinked set of climatic knowledge, thermal comfort standards, architectural technologies and a body of expertise transcending Cold-War rivalries were marshalled by Chinese and Tanzanian actors, driven by a common appetite for industrial modernity, towards the technocratic control of environmental parameters, state intervention of human bodies, and extensive exploitation of natural resources and human labor.