Dreaming Like a Market: The Hidden Script of Financial Inclusion in China's P2P Lending Platforms

Abstract

In the past ten years, Chinese people of different social strata have swarmed into the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry as lenders and borrowers. Meanwhile, stories have circulated across the media about desperate investors who lost their life savings on these lending platforms, many of which turned out to be Ponzi schemes. Based on fifteen months of fieldwork, this article presents a failed yet influential social experiment of digital finance in the world's largest developing economy. This article examines the morality of the P2P market by observing how the aspirational public script of financial inclusion is maintained and experienced through a hidden technological script that alienates the notion of “peer.” This article argues that the morality of the market is not only about “seeing” and judging from a distance but also about “feeling” and managing the moral boundaries and intersubjective distances between actors. These altered distances restructure interpersonal responsibilities and sustain the dreams and imagination that shape financial subjects on an unconscious level. The article expands the concept of market relationality beyond direct interactions between actors and uncovers the inherent tensions within the dream of financial inclusion. It examines the fantasy of beneficial technology in shaping market morality and the unintended consequences it produces.