Seven government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, have jointly issued an action plan to promote the coordinated development of large, medium, and small enterprises within the platform economy. The plan, titled "Action Plan for Promoting the Coordinated Development of Large, Medium, and Small Enterprises in the Platform Economy (2026-2028)," outlines a clear path for the transformation and upgrading of the platform economy and the integration of enterprises of different sizes.
What is the platform economy? As a new economic model, it utilizes internet platforms to connect diverse business entities, including large platform companies, a vast number of small and medium-sized merchants, and service providers. In Anshan, Liaoning province, Delin Landport Supply Chain Service Co., Ltd. has established an intelligent supply chain service platform. This platform integrates one-stop services such as online transactions, smart logistics, and warehousing and distribution, attracting over 40,000 enterprises and clients from the upstream and downstream steel industry chain.
"We rely on technologies like big data and the Internet of Things to build this service platform, gradually transforming from a traditional logistics company into a modern supply chain service enterprise," said Wang Feng, the company's chairman. By connecting supply and demand, driving transformation, and promoting employment, the role of China's platform economy in empowering the real economy has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Platform enterprises have evolved beyond their traditional roles as information intermediaries and matchmakers, becoming new digital infrastructures that integrate elements like data, technology, and application scenarios. They now serve as crucial support for empowering the transformation and development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
However, challenges such as insufficient industry coordination, uneven development among enterprises, and inefficient flow of production factors urgently need to be addressed. An official from the Information and Communication Administration of MIIT stated that China's platform economy is at a critical juncture of transformation and upgrading. There is an urgent need to grasp the new situations and requirements of economic, social, technological, and industrial changes during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period to accelerate the construction of a development ecosystem that is innovative, integrated, healthy, and efficient.
Focus on Coordination and Integration
Examining the action plan, the word "coordination" is heavily emphasized. "The plan addresses the structural contradictions in the development of large, medium, and small enterprises within the platform economy. It employs a systems-thinking approach to build a multi-dimensional collaborative framework, enabling the orderly flow and efficient allocation of factors within the ecosystem," said Yu Xiaohui, President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
Strengthening Innovation Collaboration
The plan places "innovation collaboration" at the forefront of its key tasks. It guides platform enterprises to strengthen their innovation layout in artificial intelligence fields such as general-purpose large models, industry-specific large models, and intelligent agents. It supports qualified regions in establishing incubators for small and medium-sized enterprises and accelerates the cultivation of one-person AI companies. Yu Xiaohui noted that a situation where some large enterprises have technology but lack application scenarios, while some small enterprises have ideas but lack resources, has led to a misallocation of resources along the "innovation chain." The plan's deployments around technological innovation, industrial innovation, and innovation services are expected to help resolve the coordination challenges in innovation between enterprises of different sizes.
Promoting Ecosystem Collaboration
Reshaping the relationship between platforms and small and medium-sized enterprises to build a fairer, more transparent, standardized, orderly, and efficient cooperative platform ecosystem is key to achieving coordinated development. The action plan proposes measures to enhance ecosystem quality, increase support for small and medium-sized enterprises in quality improvement and brand building, support their collaborative expansion into overseas markets, and strengthen platform compliance. These measures aim to build a collaborative ecosystem covering compliance, industry, services, and international expansion, fostering mutual empowerment between platforms and the small and medium-sized enterprises within their ecosystems.
Deepening Open Collaboration
Openness is a natural attribute of the platform economy, but questions like "what to open, to whom, and how" are deep-seated issues troubling enterprises. "Breaking down data silos and facilitating the flow of factors has become an urgent task in deepening the open collaboration of the platform economy," Yu Xiaohui observed. The action plan requires the implementation of open collaboration expansion initiatives. This includes accelerating the formulation of platform openness lists and guiding platform enterprises to open and share elements like technology, data, and computing power with small and medium-sized enterprises. This package of measures aims to make resources visible, usable, and mobile, continuously removing barriers to the flow of production factors.
Looking ahead, as new models like "AI + platform economy" continue to evolve, the participants in the platform economy will become more diverse, and its organizational forms and operational mechanisms will become more complex. Industry insiders believe that all parties should use the implementation of this action plan as a starting point. The focus should be on building an open, shared, diverse, cooperative, and innovation-active platform economy development system. This will allow large enterprises to gain ecosystem vitality through capability openness and enable small and medium-sized enterprises to unleash their innovation potential through the flow of factors, ultimately forming a virtuous cycle of value co-creation and mutual benefit to propel the platform economy to a new level of development.
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