From planetary to state-embedded AI stacks: The re-territorialisation of China's data annotation industry

Existing research has characterised data annotation as invisible and precarious digital labour, typically outsourced through global crowd-work platforms. In China, rather than being outsourced through transnational crowd-work platforms, it has been re-territorialised into state-regulated infrastructures and increasingly integrated into conventional employment models. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography, this paper examines how the formalisation of data annotation in China unfolds through intersecting state, market, and worker logics: a process of reterritorialisation that selectively formalises the organisation of the data annotation industry. At the state level, credentialisation schemes, regulatory measures, and the establishment of national data hubs embed annotation into infrastructures of data security and sovereignty. At the market level, competitive pressures for accuracy and efficiency drive procedural standardisation, task specialisation, and spatial reorganisation. At the worker level, formalisation provides contractual recognition and a sense of legitimacy, yet also entrenches surveillance, constrained autonomy, and limited career mobility. These dynamics suggest that formalisation of data annotation in China does not represent a linear transition from informality to stability, but rather a selective and layered incorporation of labour into institutional frameworks. Conceptually, we argue that this trajectory signals a shift from a deterritorialised planetary stacking order toward a reterritorialised state-embedded AI stacks.