Working in Chinese digital fitness companies: alienated labour in a state-led neoliberal economy

It is argued that the application of digital technologies to various industries have changed capitalist production models and corresponding working conditions. One such model is often characterised as digital labour. Scholars highlight the importance of analysing digital labour, with the two most influential frameworks, Marxist and Foucauldian theories. Yet the question of whether the two can work together to elucidate digital labour requires further investigation. To explore the possibility of combining the two scholarships, I introduce a new case study of the digital fitness industry in China and investigate the working conditions in two small entrepreneurial companies. To collect data, I carried out participatory observation over a period of four months, collected three-months’ worth of social media content, and conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 participants.

My key argument is that employees’ working conditions are characterised by alienation and neoliberalism, with the property relationship of means of production elucidating the co-existence of the two relationships. Both capitalists and workers can use means of production by paying the owners of those working tools, either through one-off purchase or rent. The payment to owners demonstrates that the rule of private property holds true. This rule means that employers can acquire employees’ labour power as private property by paying salaries, which legitimises the former’s private ownership of the products of the latter’s labour. Thus, the workers experience alienation in an employment relationship. Simultaneously, the workers can choose self-employment, paying to use the means of production themselves. Their payment for working tools becomes a self-investment, involving them in a neoliberal social relationship. I contribute to combining Marxist and Foucauldian theories and demonstrate the neoliberal interpretation of labour as self-investment motivates propertyless workers to work hard proactively, which veils and consolidate the unequal relationship between labour and capitalism.