On February 22, the State Information Center (SIC) officially released the annual report on the development of China's sharing economy (2021). The report shows that in 2020, the market transactions of China's sharing economy will be about 3,377.3 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of about 2.9% year on year.


According to the report, under the impact of the epidemic, China's new business forms and models, represented by the sharing economy, have shown great resilience and development potential. The impact of the epidemic on different sectors of the sharing economy is significantly different, making the imbalance in development in different sectors more prominent.

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According to the report, the market size of knowledge and skills and medical sharing grew by 30.9% and 27.8% year-on-year, respectively. The market size of shared accommodation, shared office, transportation and other fields that need to be closed through offline activities decreased significantly year-on-year, with a decrease of 29.8%, 26% and 15.7%, respectively. Life services fell 6.5 per cent year on year.


The report believes that the overall stability and better than expected employment situation in China under the impact of the epidemic cannot be attributed to the implementation of a series of policies to ensure employment, but also to the development of the sharing economy to provide a large number of jobs. Estimation shows that the number of participants in the sharing economy is about 830 million, including about 84 million service providers, an increase of 7.7% year on year. The number of employees of platform companies was about 6.31 million, up about 1.3% year on year.


The flexible employment model in the sharing economy has also become a reservoir of employment in the post-epidemic era, playing an important role in "stabilizing employment" and "ensuring people's livelihood," the report said. Report also gives some practical cases, for example, the proposition of surrounding commercial collaboration efficiency, high light free salary, which is based on modern information technology, enterprise business Internet services market, through the financial payment infrastructure, increase the rate of settlement rate and the second level to the account, by intelligent matching engine, recruiting engine, work task management engine, settlement engine four big business collaboration engine, overall improve the comprehensive service ability and flexible staffing model refinement operation level.

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The report also noted that China's tailor-made regulatory system for the sharing economy continues to improve. In the past, institutional barriers to new forms of business have made important breakthroughs. Shared medical care is a typical field in which institutional innovation is accelerated due to the epidemic situation. Tailored supervision to address problems in the development of new business forms is also on the rise. In 2020, China will strengthen supervision and regulation on the competitive behavior of large platforms, online marketing and transaction behavior, personal information protection, and online protection of key groups such as teenagers.


According to the report, in 2020, the growth rate of the sharing economy will drop significantly due to the impact of the epidemic. Considering the possible strong recovery of the macro economy, the growth rate is expected to rebound significantly in 2021, which is expected to reach 10% to 15%. In the next five years, China's sharing economy will grow at an average annual rate of over 10%.