Roles of the Southeast Asian Market on Chinese Digital Platforms' Global Expansion

Abstract

This paper analyzes the roles of Southeast Asia countries’ emerging e-commerce market for two Chinese
global companies, Alibaba and ByteDance. It puts the focus on the two firms’ development in ecommerce.
This paper finds out that the expanding e-commerce in Southeast Asia’s rapidly growing
digitalization provides excellent international opportunities and significant insights for these global
Chinese firms to launch their services in the Chinese home market, as well as their expansion in the
Western markets. By employing Southeast Asia as part of the external factors in firms’
internationalization, this research proposed a framework to explain the political and economic
relationship between China and Southeast Asia. This paper considers that the experiences that the
Chinese companies obtained from Southeast Asia made them rethink their expansion strategy in and
outside of China. This research provides a diversified perspective when looking into the China-
Southeast Asia political-economic relationship and interaction.