“Is Shein a scourge we must address or an opportunity we cannot afford to lose?”
Calling the UK a technological laggard would be misleading. It has notable strengths in areas such as life sciences and cutting-edge engineering. But today's economy, not to mention society and culture, is dominated by companies that control really large networks. Whether through search engines and maps (Google), shopping (Amazon), social networks (Meta, TikTok) or device software (Apple), most tech giants have created some kind of network: systems that allow people exchange goods and information, which they can control and squeeze for profit. When Shein protests that he is not a retailer but a platform that connects suppliers with customers, he is mainly trying to avoid responsibility, but he is also stating an important truth. She's also in the networking business, managing the pathways that funnel data and products between the social networks of Western teenagers and workshops in southern China.
Only the United States and China have developed the type of capitalism that can repeatedly grow these types of companies on a gigantic scale. In an earlier era of more harmonious globalization, that didn't seem to matter; We barely thought about where the services were coming from on our screens. But it is now clear that controlling these networks offers advantages that go far beyond a captive audience for advertising. It has allowed the companies in question to master the infrastructure that underpins the digital economy, from cloud computing servers to software operating systems and microchips. And it has provided access to huge oceans of data needed to train increasingly powerful algorithms and instruct AI. The more the American and Chinese giants extend their hegemony, the more other parts of the world will depend on them and the harder it will be for domestic contenders to grow.
Then there is the simple problem that we have so little influence over the technologies that are transforming our lives. Regulation can only go so far, as the EU is demonstrating with its titanic efforts. Armed with legislation including the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, European bureaucrats are locked in trench warfare with Big Tech over everything from social media censorship to data collection and monopolistic practices. Trying to delineate these vast, ever-evolving platforms with legal fine print is like nailing gelatin to the wall. Still, it's understandable that they tried. Network technology is inherently destabilizing, replacing established industries with chaotic horizontal swarms. Shein's reconfiguration of the fashion business is a classic example of this. The current UK election campaign offers another: whatever one thinks of traditional media, there is something disturbing about our politicians being forced to adapt their campaigns to TikTok.
The UK's failure to expand its technology companies has been a sore point for a government that likes to blabber about creating “the next Silicon Valley”. But even as Hunt tries to lure Shein to London, foreign investment firms have been snatching up promising companies from the British stock market. a mass. The business world likes to lament that Europeans are too risk-averse: their regulators too cautious, their investors and governments too scared to invest large sums in ideas that could fail. There is certainly some truth to this, and the shortage of infrastructure and skills doesn't help either. But another, more brutal factor is that China and the United States are simply more ruthless when it comes to allowing companies to ride roughshod over workers, consumers, and competitors as they grow to enormous size. Shein is an obvious example of that. Here it is other: When the AI race took off last year, American tech giants quickly laid off large numbers of workers to divert funds to research. European labor laws make this impossible.
Sure, most of us would choose a fair economy over a competitive one, but that's not really what we're doing. On the one hand, falling behind in technology will make it more difficult to implement our noble ideals; Fast fashion's ability to quickly match supply and demand, for example, may well be the key to reducing waste. Meanwhile, we continue to demand access to the products of companies whose practices we would not tolerate here. Denying Shein a place on the London stock exchange will not stop millions of Brits from consuming its products.
In many ways, Europeans' relationship with technology is another example of a familiar hypocrisy. Globalization has allowed us to enjoy the illusion of progress without material sacrifices or the need to innovate on our own. We have boasted about reducing fossil fuel extraction, carbon emissions, and cruel working conditions, even as we depend on other parts of the world to do those things for us. The realization that we may not have the luxury of rejecting a company like Shein suggests that such double standards are now becoming unsustainable.
