From ride-hailing businesses to online auctioneers, the sharing economy is quickly gaining a foothold in China, which, in Pony Ma's words, "will unleash the engines of economic growth," according to a press conference Thursday on the Internet tycoon's five proposals for the upcoming National People's Congress (NPC).
Pony Ma, president of China's Internet giant Tencent and also a deputy to the NPC, noted that the development of information technology, especially with the popularity of smart phones, have made sharing businesses based on services such as car-pooling available for almost every mobile phone user and can potentially vitalize economic growth.
As a new buzzword included in the communique of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, the sharing economy refers to a peer-to-peer social economic system built around the sharing of human and physical resources. It is a mechanism which includes shared creation, production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods of services benefiting all parties involved.
Typical in forms of car-pooling and home rental services, sharing economy platforms in China created a market worth 1.95 trillion yuan (US$298 billion) last year, according to a report released by the Internet Society of China on Feb. 28, 2016.
Despite its large scale on statistic terms, Pony Ma confessed that the business is yet to fully develop and calls for sound management on its regulation.
Regulation on this emerging industry sticks to that on traditional businesses, which is not conducive to its innovation, Ma noted.
He suggested that related agencies should reduce irrational rules and regulations hindering the industry's development and relax its market access, and also beef up efforts for infrastructure building in order to bridge the digital gap.
In addition to suggestions on the sharing economy, Pony Ma will also provide four other proposals to the NPC which include topics on Internet Plus, China's medical reform, an ecological safety system for mobile Internet and the digital content industry.
Source: China.org.cn