From platform provider to big-data-enabled financier: Industrial upgrading in China’s hog sector

Abstract

Using Pig Networks—a platform ecosystem providing big-data-driven farm management, e-commerce, and agrifinance services—as a case study, this article examines the role of the platform in the financialization of China’s hog-agriculture sector. It illustrates how the 2018–2019 national pork supply shortage, caused by the African Swine Flu outbreak, provided political legitimacy for industrial upgrading—namely, the technoeconomic restructuring of traditional sectors through technological innovation, in which industry-finance integration plays a prominent role. This article argues that financializing China’s hog agriculture is operationalized through platformizing the end-to-end lifespan of a hog farming enterprise. The process constructs a feedback-loop system that embeds farming operations within the platform ecosystem, making them susceptible to data-driven, algorithm-aided control. The dual processes of platformization and financialization can lead to two key consequences. First, they create structural incentives for industry actors—particularly producers—to adopt platform-mediated services such as enterprise data verification and loan cycle completion. These services and tools translate farming into discrete, data-driven modular components. Second, they normalize labels and valuation criteria that define optimal farming outcomes largely through the lenses of risk containment, financial performance, and market stability, which promotes a biomechanical, quantitatively conclusive, and inherently partial understanding of farming and life.