The Global Imperative: Chinese Cross-Border E-Commerce and its Political-Economic Implications in a Deglobalising World

Globalisation has allegedly been in decline for the last decade, and fears of its imminent end have been further heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with cross-border e-commerce merchants, local foreign trade officials, and e-commerce platform agents in the Chinese city of Yiwu, this article shows how a group of globalists think about and respond to deglobalisation. It argues that heavy involvement in global trade has led these individuals to treat global connectivity as their vital interest, and to maintain that connectivity they have collaboratively produced what I refer to as a new form of 'up–down' globalisation. By examining the micro-politics of globalisation, with individuals' mindsets and behaviours reacting to the macro-political events that affect (de-)globalising processes, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of globalisation and its ramifications in a Chinese context.