"Where you live determines how you are treated": E-commerce geography and digital inequality in China.

Amid global attention on the growth of China's e-commerce economy, prior research has focused more on demonstrating the digital dividends created by this new economy than on addressing the social inequalities that arise. One presumption in particular is that e-commerce economy will leverage the deterritorializing effects of digital technologies to create more equal opportunities for consumers in remote areas. Based on fieldwork with e-traders in Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, and customers from a rural county of Tibet, this article argues that while e-commerce economy has eliminated trade barriers to a certain extent, it has also drawn new geographic boundaries and engendered new social divides in China. By exploring the e-traders' hierarchal conception of baoyouguo (literally, "the free-shipping kingdom") and their subsequent differentiated treatments of customers from different regions, this study illuminates China's emerging e-commerce geography and its consequences in the Internet age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]