3.6 trillion ＂New Portrait＂ of Sharing Economy： High Growth, Shuffle Tide and New Order
The China Sharing Economy Development Report (2022) released by the National Information Center on the 22nd (hereinafter referred to as the Report) shows that in 2021, the transaction scale of China’s sharing economy market was about 3,688.1 billion yuan, up about 9.2% year-on-year, and the growth rate was significantly higher than that of the previous year.
This is the seventh time that the National Information Center has made a systematic data portrait of China’s sharing economy development. The "Report" believes that in 2021, due to various factors such as the epidemic situation, regulatory policies, corporate listing, and capital market situation, the market structure of sharing economy in major areas is accelerating.
Portrait 1: High growth
The growth rate of 9.2% reflects the resilience and vitality of development.
Combing the reports over the years, from the perspective of scale growth trend, the sharing economy has outperformed the national economy in the same period for six consecutive years.
The data shows that in 2016, the sharing economy increased by 106% year-on-year; In 2017, 47.2%; In 2018, 41.6%; In 2019, 11.6%; In 2020, 2.9%. In this regard, Sun Baowen, dean of China Internet Economic Research Institute of Central University of Finance and Economics, said that on the whole, the sharing economy is gradually returning to rationality after experiencing early "crazy development". However, continuing to outperform the national economy in the same period still reflects its vitality as a typical representative of the digital economy.
Looking specifically at the growth in 2021, the Report shows that from the perspective of market structure, the market size of the sharing economy in the three areas of life service, production capacity and knowledge and skills ranks in the top three, with 1,711.8 billion yuan, 1,236.8 billion yuan and 454 billion yuan respectively. In the main areas, except the shared accommodation area, all other areas will achieve positive year-on-year growth in 2021. Among them, the areas of office space, production capacity and knowledge and skills grew rapidly, accounting for 26.2%, 14% and 13.2% respectively.
From the development trend, in the field of transportation, the proportion of online car passenger traffic to the total taxi passenger traffic in 2021 is about 31.9%, which is 2 percentage points lower than the previous year. In addition to the epidemic situation affecting market demand, the acceleration of regulatory compliance has become the main factor for the decline in the proportion of passenger traffic in online car; In the field of life services, online services such as take-away catering, booking housekeeping and fresh e-commerce have expanded rapidly, and booking and purchasing services through platforms have gradually become the main way of people’s daily consumption. The "Report" calculation shows that in 2021, online take-away income accounted for about 21.4% of the national catering industry income, up 4.5 percentage points year-on-year.
From the perspective of residents’ consumption, the penetration rates of online car users, shared accommodation users and online take-out users among netizens in 2021 were 39.23%, 8.05% and 46.36% respectively. Sun Baowen said that the above data means that the sharing economy business model has effectively stimulated market demand. At the same time, the relatively low user penetration rate also means that there is still much room for improvement in the sharing economy in the future.
Portrait 2: Shuffle tide
Competition intensifies, and the multi-field market structure is facing reshaping.
According to the Report, in 2021, the competition among enterprises sharing the economic platform will become more intense, the market structure will undergo new changes, some industries will enter a new integration period, and a new round of "reshuffle tide" will appear in some fields. In particular, platform enterprises that have accumulated a certain user scale are actively expanding to online and offline diversified scenarios, and the expansion and innovation of diversified business models are more important.
"July 2021 is an important turning point in the change of market structure in the field of shared travel." Sun Baowen said that since then, various network car platforms have launched new market strategies. A large number of second-tier network car platforms have been promoted in various ways, and a large amount of financial subsidies have been invested at both ends of drivers and passengers to accelerate their entry into other cities.
According to the data released by the Ministry of Transport in July last year, there were 17 online car rental platforms with domestic orders exceeding 300,000, an increase of 5 from the previous month. Among the 17 platforms with monthly orders of more than 300,000 orders, 14 platforms saw an increase in order volume in July, among which 4 platforms saw an increase of more than 100%.
In addition, commercial capital has returned to the field of shared travel after several years of silence. The reporter found out that in September 2021, Cao Cao traveled in the B round of financing of 3.8 billion yuan, which was the first equity financing in the industry in 2021. In October of the same year, T3 completed 7.7 billion yuan of Series A financing, which is the largest single financing in China obtained by online car companies since 2018.
In the field of knowledge sharing, audio content products have attracted more and more public attention. The "ear economy" with sound as the carrier has developed rapidly, and its huge potential has attracted the admission of head platform enterprises such as Tencent and Tik Tok.
In 2021, ByteDance’s tomato novels launched "Listening to Tomatoes", WeChat launched "Listening to Books" and Aauto Quicker launched a podcast App "Kayak". Compared with the established companies such as Himalayan, Litchi and Dragonfly FM, these new competitors have abundant content and traffic resources, which further intensifies the market competition in this field.
In the field of shared charging treasure, the outbreak of 5G brings more consumer demand, and the market scale continues to grow rapidly.
In April, 2021, the head enterprise monster of the shared charging treasure was charged and listed, street power and search power were formally merged, and the market structure was newly adjusted. At present, it has formed a pattern of street electricity, small electricity, monster charging, incoming calls and US delegations competing together, and the head enterprises have accelerated their penetration into the third-and fourth-tier markets. With the monster charging becoming the first share in the industry, small power companies have been "diverted" from the Growth Enterprise Market to go public in Hong Kong, and new market strategies may also be launched after the merger of street power and search power. Competition in the field of shared charging treasure will continue to intensify, the advantages of head enterprises will be further strengthened, the brand effect will be more prominent, and the survival and development of tail brands will face greater pressure.
Portrait 3: New Order
The system construction was accelerated and the market was further standardized.
The "Report" pointed out that in response to various problems in the development of the sharing economy, China’s relevant system construction has continued to advance, the governance system has been continuously improved, and the market order of the sharing economy has been further standardized.
In terms of system construction, in 2021, laws and regulations such as the Data Security Law, the Personal Information Protection Law and the Regulations on the Security Protection of Key Information Infrastructure were successively implemented, and the previously promulgated National Security Law and Cyber Security Law, etc., the legal system of data security governance in the new era was initially formed, and the national governance of data security opened a new chapter. The published Anti-monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China (Revised Draft) clarifies the basic position of competition policy and the legal position of fair competition review system, and directly responds to the new problems brought about by the development of platform economy.
The reporter learned that relevant departments have also taken more refined governance measures to promote the healthy and standardized development of the industry in view of the development characteristics and existing problems of industries such as online car-sharing, shared medical care and live e-commerce.
The National Information Center believes that taking the leading enterprises in the industry as a model for standardized governance will have a wide and profound economic and social impact, which is of great significance for the healthy development of the sharing economy and further stimulating the vitality of market innovation.
In view of the new opportunities for future development, the Report analyzes a number of special documents, such as the Tenth Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development and the Tenth Five-Year Plan for National Informatization, and holds that sharing economy will become an important starting point for improving the effectiveness of digital transformation in many scenarios, such as manufacturing and living services. (Huang Hao/Wen)