ABSTRACT
China’s growing digital economy has attracted increasing spotlight in recent years. The trajectory is characterised as much by formal circuits as by informal ones and the interaction between the two. While the rise of digital platforms has witnessed formalising tendencies as evidenced in increasing commercialisation, market consolidation and regulatory oversight, it has also made the informal elements more visible. From open source cultures and piracy, to amateur media and on-demand labour, multiple forms of informality travel along the circuits of cultural production, distribution and consumption and labour utilisation. The diversity of informality refutes the common assumption that casts it in a polemic light. Moreover, the formal and informal often interpenetrate each other, which calls for a dynamic perspective.
