UNLEASHING ENORMOUS POTENTIAL
China's sharing economy now covers a wide range, from the shared use of bikes, vehicles, umbrellas, to living spaces and working spaces, and even knowledge, skills and labor.
A recent report from the State Information Center showed that about 600 million Chinese were involved in sharing of some kind in 2016, which is almost half the country's population.
The trading volume of the country's sharing economy more than doubled year on year to 3.45 trillion yuan (some 510 billion U.S. dollars) last year, the report said.
Fast growing consumer groups in China have not only supported the overseas expansion of Chinese companies in the sharing industry, but also promoted the local growth of foreign firms, which consider China's enormous domestic market "a gold mine".
"China has become the fastest growing market in the whole world for Airbnb," said Ge Hong, the home-sharing company's vice president, noting that nearly 1.6 million Chinese tourists used Airbnb in overseas trips in 2016, up 142 percent from previous year.
With advanced Internet technology, especially the wide use of mobile payment, with over 700 million netizens, and favorable policies, which have pulled in capital investment from various channels, China's sharing economy could easily realize explosive growth, said Chu Dajian, a professor from Shanghai-based Tongji University.
An opinion piece from Bloomberg published in May argued that Chinese consumers' embrace of mobile payment is key in the future development of sharing economy. China's demographic profile and changing nature of consumption are two other major factors.
Basing on the "welcoming climate" in China, the author Adam Minter concluded that many of the world's innovations in sharing businesses may start coming out of China rather than Silicon Valley.
Such innovations have already been emerging one after another. There is Fenda, a knowledge-sharing application created in 2015, which allows users to pay to hear answers of user-generated questions from industry experts.It raised 25 million dollars in its A+ financing round by China's Internet titan Tencent late last year.
China's development demands constant innovation and creative solutions, with higher technical requirements than other places in the world, Didi's Cheng said, noting that China's models are being copied by startups in other countries.
Cheng admitted that they also face numerous challenges going international, since not many Chinese Internet companies have successful experience on that regard, especially for online-to-offline businesses. "We are also exploring," the 34-year-old CEO said.
The report from State Information Center estimated that sharing economy will account for 10 percent of China's GDP by 2020, and 20 percent by 2025, with an annual growth rate of 40 percent in the next five years.
Zhang Xinhong, a research director on sharing economy from the center, believes that the sharing economy - worldwide or in China - is far from reaching its ceiling and remains either at the start-up stage or is shifting to the rapid growth stage.
Zhang predicted that the manufacturing, agriculture, education and pension fields would have large market scale and development potential, which would be at the forefront of the next wave in the sharing economy.
