By Zhou Yi, Research Team on “Development and Regulation of Platform Economy”, DRC

Research Report, No.149, 2019 (Total 5649) 2019-8-28

Abstract: The development of digital economy is entering the 2.0 era with Internet platform as the carrier and data as the driving force and platform economy has gradually become a new engine of development. It is necessary for us to follow the rules of global platform economic development, get to know the characteristics of China’s platform economy and actively face the new opportunities and challenges in the platform economy era. After giving an introduction to the connotations of platform economy and the status quo of global platform economic development, as well as the platform development of major economies in the world, this paper summarizes six trending characteristics of platform economic development including huge scale of platform economy, rapid development, strong ability to provide employment opportunities, diversified and ecological development, fierce competition between platforms and development with a world vision. The analysis results show that there are six obvious problems in the development of platform economy. For example, the definition for enterprises’ self-governance is obscure, it is difficult to exercise supervision, data property rights ownership is unclear, platform monopoly is strong, relevant laws and regulations are not in place and international coordination is insufficient. In view of the problems mentioned above, this paper believes that we need to promote the development of platform economy with a positive attitude, optimize supervision measures, and provide sound conditions for the development of platform economy.

Key words: platform economy, problems, countermeasures