This book tells the story of Walmart’s expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Eileen Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging control over large consumer markets. As Walmart’s retail business grew at unprecedented rates across the globe, so too did this business model.
Walmart: Made in China documents the business’s expansion into China not as a tale of seamless market entry, but as a case of frictions, improvisations, and labor struggles that reveal deeper transformations in global economic power. Drawing on years of fieldwork in Walmart stores across China, Otis traces an internal supply chain—from warehouse to checkout—where workers stock, promote, explain, and process goods under varying regimes of control. These labor regimes, structured by gender, migration, surveillance, and corporate rules and culture, as well as managerial oversight, reveal how capitalist value is realized, and how it can be contested.
At the heart of her analysis is the rise of a new system — merchant capitalism — in which control over consumer markets, rather than production, drives profit. Thus, Walmart: Made in China offers a compelling account of this shift in global capitalism, as it gets made and remade, on the retail floor.
