China's sharing economy grows 9.2% in 2021

China's sharing economy transaction scale reached around 3.69 trillion yuan ($583.77 billion) in 2021, up 9.2 percent from a year earlier, with a direct financing scale of about 213.7 billion yuan, up 80.3 percent year-on-year, according to the latest China Sharing Economy Development Report released recently by the State Information Center.

However, the report pointed out that the market of sharing economy in China saw imbalanced development: sharing in office space, production capacity and knowledge-and skill grew relatively fast, with transaction scales up 26.2 percent, 14 percent and 13.2 percent year-on-year respectively ; while the transaction of shared accommodation dropped 3.8 percent from 2020.

The shared services and consumption continue to play a stabilizing role in China's development, as per the report. In 2021, online take-out service accounted for about 21.4 percent of the total revenue of the nation's dining industry, up 4.5 percentage points; online car-hailing accounted for about 31.9 percent of the total taxi passenger volume; shared accommodation accounted for about 5.9 percent of the nation's guest house revenue.

The report said that in 2021, the country saw a faster reshape in the sharing economy market where growing competition was seen. A slew of regulations for protecting labor's rights and interests were rolled in the year. And the construction of market system for the sharing economy was accelerated.

The State Information Center predicted that during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period, sharing economy is expected to penetrate more in daily life services and production. And labor protection system for new employment forms based on sharing economy will be improved more quickly. Developing the sharing economy will become an important way to improve the effectiveness of the digital transformation of the real economy.