HOW CONSUMER ENTREPRENEURS ATTAIN POLITICAL LEGITIMACY FOR THEIR EMERGING INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF THE ANTI-FRAUDULENCE INDUSTRY IN CHINA

Abstract

This study examines how consumer entrepreneurs attain political legitimacy for their emerging industry in interaction with the state. An analysis of the discourses made by consumer entrepreneurs who co-created the anti-fraud industry in China between 1994 and 2014 and related discourses made by government officials and journalists was conducted. It finds that, to attain political legitimacy, consumer entrepreneurs in the industry: (1) symbolically integrate the state’s evolving dominant political ideologies, values, and agendas into the frames of their practices and collective identities; and (2) adopt five substantive political alignment strategies to help the state achieve its own goals and reinforce its own political legitimacy by collaborating with the central government, the major agent of the state, and challenging some local governments and government regulation agencies. These findings suggest the possibility that legitimation in the market place is a dialectical political process in certain contexts.