The hidden injuries of platform capitalism: alienation and overwork death in China’s platform economy

This article repositions alienation as a central analytical lens for understanding China’s platform economy, particularly in the wake of growing cases of overwork-related deaths among gig workers. While existing scholarship on platform labor often privileges exploitation as the primary site of domination and struggle, we argue that this focus fails to fully account for phenomena like overwork-to-death because it ignores the physical, emotional, and social harms experienced by workers who are not just providers of labor power, but living human beings. Based on two years of online and offline ethnographic fieldwork in Shenzhen (2022–2024), this study examines ride-hailing drivers’ experience of alienation in platform work. We identify three interlocking forms of alienation—physical, emotional, and social—that structure drivers’ everyday lives, and we argue that these alienations are not incidental, but are structurally embedded in the logics of platform capitalism in China, characterized by a regime of algorithmic control, economic pressure, and institutional ambiguity. By centering alienation, the article offers a human-centered critique of platform capitalism, revealing how it reshapes and encroaches life at the most intimate scale. In doing so, we advance a theoretical and political agenda that foregrounds the multi-dimensional costs of China’s platform economy.