Institutional and economic factors affecting the development of the Chinese cloud computing industry and market

• China׳s cloud market is a result of a number of contradictory and conflicting forces..
• China is catching up rapidly with industrialized economies in cloud development.
• Due to cyber-control measures and other protectionist policies, cloud services provided by some major foreign CSPs are unavailable in the country.
• Regulative institutions related to the cloud have more dominant effects on other institutional components.
• Normative institutions are less dominant and exert less influence on other components of institutions.

Due to the Chinese government׳s mobilization of massive resources and entrepreneurial activities of foreign and local firms, the Chinese cloud computing industry and market are growing rapidly. A number of contradictory, conflicting, and paradoxical forces are shaping the Chinese cloud computing industry and market. This paper seeks to analyze these forces. It examines the importance of various economic linkages as well as formal and informal institutions in the development and utilization of the cloud in China and the emergence of country׳s cloud providers as global players.