Experts: Digital economy's next stage of development will create more jobs

China's platform companies are entering a new stage of development and will play a more significant role in bolstering economic recovery and expanding employment, as the country has placed greater emphasis on promoting the well-regulated, healthy and sustainable development of the platform economy, experts and company executives said.

More efforts are needed to encourage platform enterprises to step up investments in state-of-the-art technologies and forward-looking fields, and further enhance their technological innovation capabilities, so as to better bolster industrial upgrade and serve the real economy, they said.

Their comments emerged in response to Premier Li Qiang's encouragement for platform companies. Presiding over a symposium with several major platform companies in Beijing on Wednesday, Li urged the latter to maintain firm confidence, keep innovating and improve their international competitiveness.

Companies from the e-commerce and consumption segments such as PDD Holdings Inc, JD, Meituan and Xiaohongshu, and those representing industrial internet platforms, like Haier Group's industrial internet platform COSMOPlat and CASICloud, were among the 14 platform enterprises that sent delegates to attend the symposium.

Zhao Jiazhen, co-CEO of Chinese online discounter PDD Holdings, said the company is beefing up efforts to bolster the transformation and upgrade of traditional industries, help farmers sell agricultural products and increase their incomes, and support China's manufacturing enterprises to expand their footprint in overseas markets.

It has continued to invest more in research and development, with its R&D budget surging 15 percent year-on-year in 2022, Zhao said, adding the company will pour more capital into supply chain construction and development of cutting-edge technologies.

On the Hong Kong stock exchange, shares of platform companies, including short-video publishers Kuaishou and Bilibili, surged more than 7 percent on Thursday, while those of microblogging platform Sina Weibo and e-commerce platform JD surged over 6 percent.

Qu Fang, founder of Xiaohongshu, a lifestyle-focused social networking site, called for efforts to give full play to the role of platform enterprises in boosting domestic demand and promoting the recovery of offline consumption, as well as leverage new technologies and platforms to help more merchants and brands seek new revenue growth drivers.

Ouyang Rihui, assistant dean of the China Center for Internet Economy Research at the Central University of Finance and Economics, said the platform economy has been instrumental in promoting high-quality economic development and improving the country's competitiveness on the global stage.

"Facilitating the development of the platform economy is of great significance to give a strong boost to economic recovery, inject new momentum into consumption growth, provide more flexible job opportunities, and ensure people's livelihoods," he said.

Xu Ran, CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant JD, said the company has invested more than 100 billion yuan ($14 billion) in basic science and technology R&D since 2017, and is committed to enhancing the resilience and safety of supply chains by leveraging digital technologies.

As the symposium focused on innovation, Han Wei, executive director of the Competition Law Research Center at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that China's high-quality economic development cannot ignore or neglect innovation.

"The platform economy is technologically intensive and highly dynamic. Many innovations coming from the platform economy have had a profound impact on the current international competition," Han said.

Chen Bing, deputy director of the School of Law at Nankai University in Tianjin, said the country's regulation over platform companies will focus on guiding them toward better compliance, and promoting their healthy development, which will boost market expectations and confidence.

According to a CITIC Securities report, such moves coincided with platform companies' efforts to address concerns like the rise of monopolies. Meanwhile, the country's regulatory system has also improved.

The focus of the authorities concerned has shifted to "normalized supervision" from intense regulatory scrutiny, the report said, adding better regulations are expected to boost the overall investment sentiment toward the internet sector.