Platform Coordinative Control and Socioeconomic System Reconfiguration: Supply-Chain Compression and Employment Absorption in China

Large platform enterprises in China have moved beyond below-cost subsidy competition to govern the coordination layer of markets (data, algorithms, access and matching rules), raising the question of how such coordinative control reconfigures the socioeconomic system. Viewing the economy as a complex adaptive system, this paper proposes that platform capital upgrades its structural power from investment control to coordinative control, and that its extension into livelihood sectors produces structural reconfiguration rather than simple destruction. Using a balanced panel of 31 Chinese provinces over 2015–2024 and a set of structural indicators (retail employment intensity, wholesale–retail employment-to-population ratio, self-employment share, and a registered-unemployment proxy), we document four stylized facts. First, platform penetration is positively associated with development levels (aggregate gains). Second, the employment-carrying capacity of retail declines by 43.0% over the sample, with a significant trend break in 2017/2018 that coincides with the platform boom (partly supply-chain compression, partly rising distribution-sector productivity). Third, the employment shock of reconfiguration is partly offset in the labor market: faster-penetrating provinces exhibit significantly lower registered unemployment (coefficient − 0.027, p = 0.010) and earlier expansion of self-employment, an association consistent with an absorption effect. Fourth, aggregate improvement and structural rewriting coexist, constituting a sustainability paradox of digital transformation in which aggregate indicators, as low-dimensional observables of a high-dimensional system, systematically overstate sustainability. The findings extend the analysis of capital’s structural power and offer structural indicators for inclusive digital governance.