"Roll" inward, or "overflow" outward? The new power of the Internet in the chill
Since 2021, some internet manufacturers have continued to break the news of declining profits, shrinking water, tightening financing, and large-scale layoffs. Entering 2022, there does not seem to be any signs of improvement. Some people joked, shouted for many years of Internet cold wave, and finally caused a cold winter after the big factory was also deeply involved.
The causes of the Internet winter are complex, and it is by no means a day's cold. Internet companies should be the representative of advanced technology and advanced productive forces, however, some Internet companies in the industry development dividends, in a steady stream of capital-driven waves, with the most rugged model to make the fastest money, although quickly completed the original accumulation, but also breeding a keen overnight wealth of the quick success mentality. China's Internet industry has grown barbarically, derealized to virtual for a long time, and even once monopolized the market by virtue of technological advantages, reduced dimensionality and cracked down, and competed with the people for profits.
Without the precipitation of core competitiveness, the result will only be counterproductive. In the face of the reality of peaking C-end traffic, intensified market competition, and tightening industry supervision, some Internet companies that are limited to the habitual profiteering thinking in the past have shown great inadaptability, and the traditional profit model is difficult to sustain.
At the same time, some new Internet forces are booming and are experiencing a wave of small Yangchun - or in the vertical field of deep ploughing, or with emerging technologies to continuously refresh the scene economy, the volume is not necessarily "large", profit ambitions are not necessarily "violent", but it has become a bright color in the cold winter of the market.
In March, the cold winter of nature is about to pass, can Internet companies return to spring and warm up?
The industry dilemma also indicates the arrival of an inflection point in development. At a time when the digital game of major countries is intensifying and the digital economy has become the forefront of global competition, coexisting with the real economy, actively embracing the digital economy, and speeding up and improving digital governance have become a major turning point and an important way out for the transformation and development of the Internet industry in the future. Only by calmly reflecting in the changes and sieges, reactivating the innovation gene, and breaking through the ceiling of sustainable development can we survive the pain of winter and wait for the spring to blossom.
Chief Planner: Ye Jundong
Overall implementation: Zhou Qingyin Deng Jia
Draft: Li Jianfa
Research and writing: Mao Zhenhua, Zhu Han, Zhang Xuan, Guo Yujing, Li Jianfa, Chen Yuxuan, Ma Xiaocheng, Zhou Lin, Gong Wen
Editor: Li Jianfa
The Internet is chilling, more bitter than in previous years
Half Moon talks about reporter Mao Zhenhua
Recently, the concept of meta-universe has exploded, and many Internet companies have competed for layout, which seems to be well-funded and full of confidence, but behind it is difficult to hide the dilemma that the Internet is currently facing. Internet companies that were once intoxicated with application innovation generally felt the ceiling of development. The decline in growth, lack of innovation, tightening of financing, many Internet companies that are accustomed to being lavish have chosen to lay off employees to avoid the cold winter, but still have to face a grim fact, that is, there is no eternal king in the Internet world, and the lack of core competitiveness not only means passive beating, but also related to life and death.
17,336 closed in 5 years
At the end of each year, Internet companies will almost always hear the news of layoffs, the reason is nothing more than business transformation and cost reduction considerations. However, since the second half of 2021, the cold wind of layoffs in Internet companies seems to be more severe than ever.
Didi, which is suspected of seriously violating laws and regulations in collecting personal information, suffered its biggest crisis since its inception last year. In the US stock market delisting, a series of apps were removed... Didi Camp shrinks the water and lays off employees in a reasonable way, and it is somewhat unexpected. After all, to this day, Didi is still in the leading position in the domestic online car field, and its market position is difficult to be shaken in the short term.
iQiyi's massive layoffs, which began in December 2021, are also in the spotlight. At about the same time as the layoffs, iQIYI membership prices rose. According to the third quarter report of 2021, iQiyi's revenue was about 7.6 billion yuan and its net loss was about 1.7 billion yuan. Behind the widening of the loss margin is the lack of growth, as of the end of the third quarter of 2021, iQIYI's subscription membership size has shrunk to 103.6 million.
After all, the attention of the audience is limited, in this "attention war", short video is in the limelight, and the long video track faces strong competition from short video platforms.
In addition, there have been recent reports that some Internet manufacturers have either laid off employees, or declined revenue, or the growth rate is less than expected. Under the cold winter, it is rare to achieve steady growth.
IT Orange statistics show that in the 5 years from 2016 to 2021, a total of 17,336 Internet companies have closed. Among them, there are many well-known enterprises such as Ofo Small Yellow Car, Global Tesco, and Wanda E-commerce, and the shortest survival time is only a few months. Take ofo Xiaohuangche as an example, this former star enterprise in the sharing economy field, the market valuation was once as high as two or three billion US dollars, however, due to missed opportunities and blind expansion, now it is in the dilemma that even the official website domain name has no money to renew.
The inertial profit model is difficult to last, and the supervision should shoot when it is time to shoot
Why is this internet cold current so fierce at the moment? The reporter combed and found that it was largely due to the problems in the development model of the Internet companies themselves.
In recent years, Internet companies have taken a rapid leap forward and become increasingly platformized, beginning to penetrate into all aspects of people's lives. Fueled by the pursuit of capital to maximize interests, some Internet platforms have gone astray and used their monopoly positions to derive bad deeds such as "two choices one", "exclusive copyright", and "big data killing". The monopolistic behavior of platform enterprises not only infringes on the rights and interests of consumers, but also causes bottlenecks in the development of backward small and medium-sized Internet enterprises.
In 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed administrative penalties on Meituan's "two alternatives" monopoly in China's online catering takeaway platform service market in accordance with the law. "Judging from the penalty decision in the Meituan case, the anti-monopoly law enforcement agency has further clarified the application of platform anti-monopoly supervision rules, and the market competition order in the platform economy field is steadily improving." Wang Jian, a member of the expert advisory group of the Anti-Monopoly Commission of the State Council, believes.
Of course, punishment is not the goal, the key lies in pulling Internet companies back to the right track of healthy and orderly development. In particular, through the judgment and punishment of some typical cases, the bottom line is drawn, the "traffic lights" are set up, and the capital and platform are guided, so that Internet companies can continue to grow bigger and stronger under the premise of following the rules.
At this stage, large Internet enterprises have a disorderly expansion and even monopolistic development tendency, and the root cause of their problems lies in the development model. In the public impression, a group of Internet companies that should be full of infinite vitality lack innovation, indulge in relatively simple, fast-money application model innovation can not extricate themselves, and gradually drift away from the world's top Internet companies in the original innovation.
From piling up group buying business, entering the online car- ride-hailing, fighting in the takeaway market, to investing in shared bicycles, infiltrating the community to buy vegetables, and throwing money at subsidies in exchange for market share, and then using consumers to develop habits and profit by virtue of market advantages, this profit model is the same, and the public has long been alert.
The crowd is rolling inward, and the competitive track is becoming more and more differentiated
With the narrowing of the incremental space for users, the significant rise in traffic costs, and the increasingly fierce internal competition in the Internet industry, the traditional market pattern is accelerating.
Taking the e-commerce platform as an example, for a long time, Alibaba has been in the position of industry leader, and JD.com's market share is relatively stable and second. However, the Internet industry is changing rapidly, the siphon effect of industry giants continues to weaken, and market share has repeatedly declined. The reduced market share was divided up by the subsequent rising rookies such as Pinduoduo and Vipshop. E-commerce analyst Li Chengdong believes that retail e-commerce is changing from "one super and many strong" to a situation of "group division", and the giants are accelerating the reshuffle.
Cross-industry competition has made the already narrowed e-commerce track more crowded. Douyin and Kuaishou are not willing to be confined to the field of short videos, and in recent years, they have flourished in live streaming with goods, frequently challenging the status of the traditional head of the industry.
The increasing differentiation of the market also occurs in the field of online ride-hailing. With the removal of many related Apps from Didi, in the face of the huge cake temptation in the travel market, other online car companies have raised their spirits and the jianghu has resurfaced.
At present, there are two main business models in the online ride-hailing market: one is the C2C model with private cars as the operating vehicle, including Didi, and the other is the B2C model with the company's own vehicles as the main transportation capacity, such as Cao Cao Travel, T3 Travel, etc. The B2C model is regarded as an asset-heavy model, and due to its advantages in safety and passenger service, it has won opportunities in the new round of market competition.
Cao Cao Travel, Geely Group's online ride-hailing platform, announced in September last year that it had completed a Series B round of financing worth 3.8 billion yuan. Lu Zhidong, chairman of Xiangcheng Financial Holdings, as one of the investors, said: "The focus of investment is to choose the track, travel is just needed, whether it is a short-term window or long-term competition, there is still room." This means that capital is still optimistic about the potential of online ride-hailing.
It can be said that in the field of the Internet, nothing is set in stone, and if there is, then it must be innovation. Innovation is the king of constant victory.
New forces are rising, and the "tropical rainforest" ecology is warming
Half Moon Talk Reporters Guo Yujing, Li Jianfa, Zhou Lin, Gong Wen
The two-way empowerment of Internet technology and digital economy is giving birth to new formats with more levels and higher energy levels, which not only provides new momentum for high-quality economic development, but also enhances the vitality and resilience of the development of urban hundreds of industries. Among them, there are both the "elephant dancing" of traditional Internet manufacturers and the "ant soldiers" of emerging Internet companies; it is not only manifested in the formation of a "tropical rainforest" ecology in the vertical field, but also reflected in the new digital technology and new capabilities to spawn a new scene economy. They provide a new track for the Internet to develop healthily at a high energy level.
The rise of new forces on the Internet, the scale of "subdivision vertical category" jumped
Tiger Punch is the largest sports vertical community in the country, with 85% of users being men; Little Red Book focuses on the lifestyle of young women after the 90s, with about 200 million monthly active users; Bilibili is a highly concentrated cultural community and video platform for "Generation Z"; Ctrip focuses on travel and is committed to building the world's largest travel enterprise; Oriental Wealth Network focuses on financial information service platform...
Unlike the 1.0 version of the greedy and savage growth, the new forces of the Internet in the 2.0 version are showing their strength, mainly concentrated in vertical segments to show agglomeration effects. The "elephant dancing" of traditional Internet factories and the "ant soldiers" of emerging Internet companies are full of vitality, no matter how big or small, presenting a symbiotic ecology of "tropical rainforest".
Compared with traditional e-commerce, pan-entertainment and other fields that are monopolized by Internet manufacturers, vertical fields provide soil for the rise of more new Internet forces. The "2021 Q4 Mobile Internet Industry Data Research Report" shows that life services, automotive services, and office business have become traffic depressions, which are popular industries that are key to compete.
On December 27, 2021, the audience visited Liang Xu in the smart city exhibition area of the CHTF
The favor of related enterprises in the capital market can be seen. Since last year, Internet companies such as Zhongyan Technology, Evernote, and Decibel Tong have successively obtained financing. In March 2021, Evernote completed hundreds of millions of yuan of B round financing, and Tang Yi, chairman and CEO of the company, said that Evernote's revenue is 2 to 3 times that of some "unicorns", and the possibility of making another round of financing before listing is not ruled out.
In the face of the epidemic, the digital economy represented by the Internet industry has shown strong anti-"epidemic" characteristics, home office, live e-commerce, remote diagnosis and treatment... More and more vertical scenes are constantly being opened. Facing the computer screen, the doctors of a hospital in Shanghai can "look and hear" the patients of a hospital in Yunnan Province, which is more than 2,000 kilometers away, and the high-definition 3D video presents the patient's symptoms in front of the doctor in real time. In the past, when remote consultations were held, doctors could only refer to medical history data, and real-time video allowed doctors to more accurately prescribe the right medicine.
Behind this, thanks to the optimization of the layout of the new infrastructure. The desire of new network forces for public resources such as new infrastructure is even more urgent. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the end of 2021, the mainland has built and opened 1.425 million 5G base stations; the construction of computing power hubs and data center clusters in the mainland is also continuing to advance. While the new infrastructure empowers more scene economies, it also allows more and more small and medium-sized enterprises and ordinary people to feel the dividends brought by the digital wave.
Cutting-edge technologies are creating new opportunities
With the emergence of a large number of new digital technologies and new capabilities, the integrated development of online and offline has become a new opportunity for more and more Internet companies to spend the winter and spring.
First, the integrated development of sea, land, air and space.
The relevant person in charge of the US group said that after the development of artificial intelligence, biological engineering and other technologies are mature, they can help humans solve physical world problems through a certain software and hardware technology.
Looking back at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, in addition to sports stars such as Gu Ailing and Su Yiming, a group of intelligent robots active in and around the arena are equally impressive - reception robots that can brew coffee, navigation robots that can lead the way with more Chinese words, and epidemic prevention robots that remind people to wear masks... They became internet celebrities during the Winter Olympics.
Outside the arena, Internet companies are also extending more intelligent experiences to the daily lives of ordinary people. As of the end of December 2021, Meituan's automatic delivery vehicles have delivered nearly 190,000 real orders in Shunyi, with an autonomous driving mileage of more than 700,000 kilometers. The relevant person in charge of meituan said that in the future, it will build an urban low-altitude logistics network integrating aircraft, ground undertaking devices and route management systems to meet the distribution needs of different scenarios.
Second, the "planting grass" model is in the ascendant, and the Internet has catalyzed consumption changes.
New technologies and models are driving the growth of new consumption. In the past two years, many Internet companies, including Xiaohongshu, Taobao, Bilibili, Zhihu, Meituan, and Dewu, have invariably developed towards the "planting grass" model.
The person in charge of Xiaohongshu said that more and more users are keen to share their lifestyles, so after the platform has grown, more users have been "planted" by the content and experienced offline consumption. Taking camping as an example, to date, more than 220,000 users have shared their camping experience on Little Red Book, with more than 450,000 related notes.
Little Red Book blogger in the live broadcast of the exhibition Wang Xiang / photo
In the Dewu App, young people use AR to try on new fashion shoes, try on watches and sunglasses, try on popular lipsticks... The person in charge of dewu said that the immersive shopping experience brought by AR technology allows consumers to intuitively feel the size, detailed characteristics and wearing effect of the goods.
Third, new types of scientific and technological employment are emerging.
In the self-driving car scenario, traditional drivers have been replaced by new occupations called "safety officers." In November 2021, the first pilot commercialization of autonomous mobility services in China was launched in Beijing. On Hongda South Road in Beijing's Economic and Technological Development Zone, a reporter from Banyue Tan called a self-driving vehicle through Baidu's "Radish Run" App, and the destination was Han's Square, about 2.6 kilometers away. Three minutes later, a white red flag SUV pulled up and parked on the side of the road. Unlike traditional taxis, the driver of an autonomous vehicle sits in a safety officer. These security officers are certified after professional training and examinations.
Meituan's autonomous delivery vehicles have spawned a new profession of testing safety officers. Their work is generally divided into two parts: one is to help train vehicles, improve the efficiency of algorithm and hardware iteration; The second is to ensure the safety of the vehicle during the driving process, and be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the vehicle foundation. Feng Haiyang, a test safety officer for meituan's automatic delivery vehicles, said that from logistics drivers to takeaway riders to test safety officers, his professional experience has condensed the development process of the distribution industry.
Inward "roll", or outward "overflow"
The digital transformation of the city dimension has created more new scenarios for the Internet industry and spawned more new service models. The reporter combed and found that at present, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Ningbo, Zhengzhou, Xi'an and other cities are carrying out smart city innovation practices. Some cities have accelerated the creation of "urban digital bases", giving birth to new formats that are integrated and symbiotic with industrial production and urban life.
In Changning, Shanghai, the internet technology is integrated, and the smart water meter can monitor the water consumption of the elderly living alone, so as to judge whether the living conditions of the elderly are normal. Shanghai will also form an index of meituan's small shop data such as coffee and milk tea to empower urban governance.
The continuous cross-integration of the Internet with artificial intelligence and digital transformation has spawned a series of new formats and new scenarios, and relevant regulations and standards are urgently needed to escort the healthy development of the industry.
The Regulations on the Promotion of the Digital Economy of Zhejiang Province came into effect in March 2021, and a number of local standards such as the definition of digital reform terms and the guidelines for the classification and grading of public data have also been promulgated. Shanghai has successively launched a series of regulations such as the Shanghai Municipal Data Regulations, becoming the first local government in China to systematically propose to build an artificial intelligence standard system.
The "second half" of the Internet industry is international competitiveness. Industry insiders said that digital assets are an important element of future international trade, and it is necessary to connect with international financial laws in advance, actively carry out various international data dialogues, and explore a standard system that is beneficial to china.
Can Web 3.0 serve as the next generation of the Internet?
Half Moon Talk Reporter Chen Yuxuan Ma Xiaocheng
Standing at the crossroads of the Internet winter, where will the future development of the industry go? The evolution path of technology may provide a perspective. Recently, the next-generation Internet form represented by Web 3.0 has received widespread attention at home and abroad.
One view is that Web 3.0 may become a new form of the next generation of Internet that profoundly changes Internet platform companies, helping to solve the problems of monopoly in the platform economy, harvesting user interests, and leaking user privacy. There are also many insiders who say that the current so-called Web 3.0 is more of a concept, and there is even a risk of speculation tied to virtual currencies, bringing new challenges to Internet regulation.
A decentralized form of the Internet
The current industry hotly discussed Web 3.0 is a new concept relative to Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, which is used to describe the stage of Internet development. In the Web 1.0 era, users are "readable but not writable", receive information in one direction, and cannot create content on the Internet, which gave birth to portals such as Yahoo Abroad and China's Sina, Sohu, and NetEase.
In the Web 2.0 era, users can "read and write", can interact on the Internet, participate in content creation, and thus give birth to a large number of platform companies, such as Facebook and Youtu in the United States, Tencent, Alibaba, Douyin, Bilibili in China, etc. Although Web 2.0 has advanced the functions of the Internet by a big step, the user's activities on the Internet must rely on the platform to achieve, the platform has mastered the user, but also mastered the right to speak on the Internet, resulting in problems such as monopoly, platform harvesting profits and so on.
Web 3.0 is not a completely new concept either. The reporter combed and found that since around 2008, the morphological characteristics of the next generation of the Internet have begun to attract the attention of some people. At present, the evolution of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things, as well as the rise of the concept of metaversity, have directly promoted this round of Web 3.0 boom and given this concept a new connotation.
According to the industry's vision, in the Web 3.0 era, users are "readable, writable and owned", which is a decentralized Internet form based on blockchain technology. At this stage, the Internet does not need a centralized platform, and users have ownership of the content they create.
Xu Siyan, a senior researcher at Tencent Research Institute, said that Web 3.0 uses code to realize the rights and interests of individuals on the Internet, which means that the data and information generated by users on the Internet belong to users themselves, including text, video, audio, etc. People can confirm their rights to their digital assets, and data privacy will be protected by means such as encryption algorithms and distributed storage.
The heat in the technology community is surging and the regulators are paying close attention
Since December 2021, as Tesla founder Elon Musk, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and well-known Silicon Valley investor Mark Anderson have started a "war of words" on Social Media on Web 3.0, the concept has received further attention, and the popularity of Web 3.0 has been rising.
- Capital inflows. Articles from Forbes magazine show that in 2021, talent and capital have flowed into the Web 3.0 ecosystem, global venture capital firms have invested more than $30 billion in crypto startups related to the Concept of Web 3.0, and some large funds that previously avoided cryptocurrencies are now actively entering the market through late-stage equity. There are currently more than 65 unicorns engaged in crypto research, of which more than 40 will be added in 2021 alone, and nearly 50 crypto startups will raise more than $100 million in 2021.
- Giant Exploration. Facebook's parent company Meta recently announced that the Facebook platform will provide deep compatibility for blockchain technology, which means that Facebook's social system will be combined with Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and other Web 3.0 technologies. On February 10, 2022, social gaming company Zynga announced that it will launch token and blockchain games. The layout of these internet giants for Web 3.0 is considered iconic.
- Regulatory concerns. In addition to the recent layout of Internet giants such as Facebook and Google, the US political circles have maintained a high degree of attention to Web 3.0. In December 2021, at a hearing on digital assets held in the US Congress, the heads of the six most active large crypto asset-related companies briefed members of Congress on the development direction of crypto technology and also highlighted the concept of Web 3.0, which triggered a lot of discussion.
Be wary of hype and bubble risks
In fact, in the current new round of Web 3.0 boom based on blockchain, related technologies and projects are still in the early stages of development, and the business model is not yet mature. There are many controversies and disagreements in the industry, and we need to be wary of some people hyping up concepts in the name of Web 3.0 for profit.
Elon Musk previously posted on social platforms that he believes that Web 3.0 is not real at present, but more of a marketing buzzword, at most encouraging people to imagine what the Internet will look like in 10, 20 or 30 years.
In the future, will Web 3.0 only be possible to build on top of the blockchain? In an article posted on the official Twitter account of Cornell Law School, James Grimmelmann, a Professor at Cornell University who studies law and technology, said that blockchain may appear in the toolkit for building the next generation of internet, but this does not mean that the next generation of internet must be built around blockchain.
This wave of Web 3.0 boom is closely related to concepts such as blockchain and virtual currency, especially enterprises, research institutions and even many self-media that are keen to discuss related topics, most of which have relevant backgrounds. In this regard, we need to be wary of someone "cutting leeks" in the name of Web 3.0. Zeng Guang, secretary general of the Shenzhen Internet Finance Association, said that in the face of the Web3.0 boom, we must pay attention to identifying illegal acts such as fraud, and it is even more necessary to prevent the speculation of virtual currencies from changing and making a comeback.
Some industry insiders also proposed that Web 3.0, which is based on blockchain, is a decentralized structure, and network supervision will face new challenges for user decentralized behavior. How to incorporate government functions into web 3.0 networks will be a new and urgent topic.
Detachment from the virtual to the real, virtual and real symbiosis to seek a new life
Half Moon Talk Reporter Zhu Han Zhang Xuan
Blockchain, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other technologies are increasingly integrated into all fields and the whole process of economic and social development, and the speed of digital economic development, the wide range of radiation, and the depth of influence are unprecedented. For some Internet companies that have been derelict to virtual for a long time, how to detach from virtual to real, deeply integrate with the real economy, and anchor industrial digitalization is a transformation path to survive the cold winter of the Internet and seek long-term development.
Mobile phones have become new agricultural tools, and data has become new agricultural materials
This past Spring Festival, "Dandong Strawberry" has become a popular agricultural product for consumers in the north and south with the help of the Internet. "In the past, the red strawberries produced in Dandong, Liaoning Province, often could not go out of the local market, and the 'best taste period' was always wasted in multiple distributions and lengthy transportation." Li Yunfeng, head of the Pinduoduo agricultural project, said.
Some local head farms in Dandong have introduced the "Zhiduoberry" artificial intelligence planting system in the new season, realizing the improvement from "one greenhouse two people managing" to "one person managing seven greenhouses". In the sales link, through the "purchase + direct hair of the place of origin", the aggregation effect is formed in time and space, providing long-term stable orders for agricultural cooperatives and family farms, reshaping the circulation chain of agricultural products, so that farmland is directly connected to office buildings and residential communities, and the place of origin is directly connected to the consumer's table.
In the fields everywhere, there are more and more such scenes: large planters use drones to manage their farmland, observe changes in the field through data, and expand sales channels on the Internet. Mobile phones have become new agricultural tools, data has become new agricultural materials, and live broadcasting has become a new agricultural work.
During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the digital transformation of mainland industries has been steadily advancing. The digitalization of agriculture has been comprehensively promoted, the level of digitalization of the service industry has been significantly improved, the digital transformation of industry has accelerated, and more enterprises have stepped onto the "cloud".
In the boss electrical appliance production base in Linping, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, tens of thousands of square meters of sheet metal stamping workshop, 284 automated equipment is running on its own, and there are almost no workers in sight.
"Even when the order volume soars, we don't have to add people, we can turn the equipment on." In the past, 1 factory would have required 10 quality inspectors to keep an eye on, but now only one or two are needed. Pan Tengjun, head of the production department of the "unmanned factory", said. In 2019, Boss Electric began to cooperate with Alibaba Cloud and Zhejiang University to take the lead in building an "unmanned factory". Cameras are installed in all corners of the factory, and the cameras on the product line are not only high-definition, but also have image recognition functions, which can monitor problems in the production process of the product in real time, even including trachomas and defects on the steel plate.
The data shows that in 2021, the numerical control rate of key processes, the penetration rate of digital operation and management and the penetration rate of digital research and development design tools of industrial enterprises above designated size will reach 54.6%, 69.8% and 74.2% respectively, and there will be more than 100 industrial Internet platforms with industry and regional influence, and the number of industrial equipment connections will exceed 76 million units.
Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the digitalization process of the life service industry has also accelerated. E-commerce is booming, mobile payment is widely popularized, new ways of production and life such as online payment, online live broadcasting, and online video are accelerating, and the Internet platform is growing day by day.
The future is moving from the virtual to the real
The real economy is the source of the Internet platform, and the future of the digital economy is moving from virtual to real. Virtual reality is born, and the effects are superimposed.
-- Playing the role of amplification, superposition and multiplication. "Gone are the days of 'hundreds of millions of shirts for an airplane.'" After seeing the changes brought by Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing to small and medium-sized clothing companies, Hou Wenhao, a senior expert at McKinsey & Company, sighed. Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing front-end connects users and small and medium-sized businesses on Taobao and Tmall, and connects raw materials, Internet of Things and logistics providers on the back end, and the resource utilization rate is 4 times higher than the industry average.
"In the past, the stability of the supply chain of the worm was insufficient, and some suppliers had quality fluctuations during the rapid replenishment process, which made us miss the best sales time in the new season." "Bug Sister", the e-commerce head of Taobao clothing brand Worm, said that cooperation with the intelligent manufacturing platform has effectively lowered the supply chain quotation, shortened the pre-sale cycle, and basically eliminated inventory pressure.
-- Promoting breakthroughs in key technologies. The Institute of Agricultural Sciences of china and Alibaba have reached a cooperation, relying on the basic conditions of crop genetic resources and major national scientific projects for genetic improvement, and leveraging Alibaba's advantages in big data processing, storage and analysis to build an intelligent "smart breeding public service platform" covering the whole chain of crop breeding.
"Traditional breeding mainly relies on the experience of breeders to select seeds, which usually requires a breeding cycle of 8 to 10 years, and many unexpected factors are excluded in the later stage. At present, developed countries are upgrading from 'molecular breeding' to 'smart breeding'. For us, this is both an opportunity and a challenge for technology to catch up. Li Huihui, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that in the future, it is expected to shorten the breeding time by half through "smart breeding", from 10 years to 5 years or even shorter.
-- Broadening employment channels and promoting flexible employment. "At present, more than 800 compatriots and I have become colleagues and are employed at the doorstep of their homes." Yin Qin, head of the sorting team of Jingdong Logistics Nanchang Xiangtang Sorting Center, said. "Asia One" is the code name of JD Logistics' large-scale intelligent logistics park, and there are currently 41 in the country. Yin Qin said that in order to ensure convenient transportation, "Asia One" is built along the highway, so that a large number of local employed people have a new place to go.
The new economy has given workers more room for choice. According to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, there are already 200 million flexible employment personnel in the mainland. According to the "China Sharing Economy Development Report (2021)" released by the State Information Center, in 2020, there will be about 830 million sharing economy participants, of which about 84 million will be service providers.
Virtual and real interaction, can not be tasted and stopped
During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the mainland's information infrastructure is leading the world, the digital economy is developing rapidly, the total scale ranks second in the world, it has a good foundation for development, and has great potential. According to the White Paper on the Development of China's Digital Economy (2021) released by the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in 2020, the penetration rates of the digital economy in agriculture, industry and service industry will be 8.9%, 21.0% and 40.7% respectively.
Unmanned delivery vehicle Xue Chen / photo taken in Chengdu, Sichuan Province
Some experts and industry insiders believe that the current integration of the mainland's digital economy and the real economy, relying more on the application of digital technology and the scale advantage of the consumer market, is not deeply touched at the industrial level and the essential function of the digital economy.
"In terms of fusion applications, the problem of insufficient and unbalanced is prominent." He Wei, deputy director of the Institute of Policy and Economics of the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry is relatively slow, the large number of small and medium-sized enterprises with a wide range of accounts is more, and the degree of networking and intelligence of industrial production is still low.
"The future of the digital economy is to move from the virtual to the real, which is already a consensus that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people." Liu Gongrun, vice president of the China Europe Lujiazui Institute of International Finance, said that the digital economy is essentially a market tool, the development of digital technology is a means, not an end, fundamentally through the digital economy link effect and digital empowerment, activate the entire industry, and ultimately promote the high-quality development of the real economy.
In He Wei's view, the current traditional management mechanism and regulatory means of segmentation are no longer suitable for the needs of the integrated development of the digital economy, and the regulatory mechanisms and regulatory means urgently need to be innovated. Zhang Shuai, vice president of Hangzhou Qu chain Technology Co., Ltd., also said that some emerging digital technologies are integrating with the real economy to form new models and new formats, which need to be recognized and supported at the level of laws and regulations to obtain greater development space.
In recent years, a large number of new types of brick-and-mortar enterprises with traditional physical genes and powerful digital technologies and capabilities have emerged. Liu Gongrun believes that vigorously developing such new types of entity enterprises will effectively drive upstream and downstream enterprises to achieve digital transformation and intelligent development, and can establish an ecological base of technology empowerment and inclusive sharing in the fields of industrial production, commodity circulation, information and communication, and people's livelihood security.
Protect the Internet's warming, digital good governance should be done
Half Moon Talk reporter Li Jianfa
Since the epidemic, more and more countries have taken the development of the digital economy as a starting point to promote economic growth, and the digital economy has become a key force in reshaping global factor resources, reconstructing the global economic structure and restructuring the global competitive landscape. To a large extent, platform enterprises, or head digital enterprises, have become the most important indicators to measure the development of a country's digital economy. Under the global vision of increasing competition and game in the digital economy, how can mainland Internet companies jointly cope with the dual challenges from the internal and external environment, make up for the shortcomings of development, and break through the bottleneck of growth? How can mainland digital governance keep up with the rapid pace of the digital economy, help and ensure that Internet companies get out of the cold winter and highlight the siege?
In view of this, the reporter of the Half Moon Talk interviewed Zhang Monan, chief researcher of the Institute of American and European Studies of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
The era of the digital economy reshapes the global economic structure
Half-monthly talk: Looking at the world, the digital economy accounts for an increasing proportion of the global economy. Do you think the world has now entered the era of the digital economy?
Zhang: IDC predicts that by 2023, the output value of the global digital economy will account for 62% of global GDP. This means that the world has entered the era of the digital economy. The new globalization, characterized by digitalization, is reshaping the global economic structure, international division of labor and competition.
The 10 years from the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" to the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" are the period of rapid growth of the mainland's digital economy. In 2020, the scale of the mainland's digital economy reached 39.2 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 38% of GDP. The comparison found that the growth rate of "industrial digitalization" is much higher than the growth rate of "digital industrialization", and the proportion is also rising, which reflects the substantive effect of industrial digital transformation in mainland China.
Half-Moon Talk: What new trends and characteristics does the digital economy show in reshaping the global economic structure?
Zhang Monan: The new globalization characterized by digitalization shows some new characteristics. First, data as a factor of production, there has been a spurt of growth, and the scale effect has emerged. Second, new infrastructure has replaced the iron public foundation and become a new infrastructure to promote the development of the global digital economy. Third, the global cross-border data flow has exploded on a large scale, and the data flow drives the business flow, industrial flow, technology flow, and capital flow. Fourth, "digital industrialization" and "industrial digitalization" have brought about the reconstruction of the global industrial chain, supply chain and value chain, making digital trade the main growth engine leading global trade. Fifth, the platform economy has risen rapidly and become a new infrastructure platform.
From the perspective of the main body of the digital economy market, by the end of 2020, there are 76 platform companies with a global market value of more than 10 billion US dollars, with a total market value of about 12.5 trillion US dollars, of which the market value of super platforms in China and the United States accounts for almost 90% of them. The platform monopoly and data monopoly associated with super platforms are related to national security and digital poverty, which has increasingly triggered the reflection of digital governance in various countries.
To speed up digital governance globally, China cannot be absent
Half Moon Talk: For the mainland, what kind of external environment does it face in participating in global digital governance?
Zhang Monan: Digital governance at the global level is more about competition between countries and countries between digital regulatory policies and digital governance rules. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the world's major powers will continue to engage in confrontations around the stability of the digital industry chain, the control of digital technology, the maintenance of digital sovereignty, data security and cross-border flow, and personal privacy protection.
In recent years, major economies have stepped up their own digital governance strategies. The Introduction of the Digital Economy Agenda, the Federal Data Strategy, and the Federal Data Strategy 2020 Action Plan are all strengthening the interests of the United States on a series of issues. For example, based on the Cloud Act, digital governance is extended and long-arm jurisdiction is implemented. The EU's Digital Services Act, the Digital Marketplace Act and the Digital Compass 2030 are also reinforcing the EU's digital interests.
Linking the digital economy and digital technology with geopolitics, ideology and values, the United States and the European Union have introduced a series of strategies and policies around digital values and digital sovereignty. The so-called democratic science and technology alliance in the United States is essentially to form a new paradigm of global digital rules that serves its own interests.
Half Moon Talk: Have there been any digital governance templates formed so far?
Zhang Monan: At present, there is no consensus on global digital governance rules, a unified digital economy governance rule system has not yet been formed in the world, a large number of digital governance rules are blank or fragmented, and the shortage of institutional supply is prominent. The United States and the European Union have taken the lead in building digital trade rules for "American templates" and "European templates", with the intention of locking in the development space of digital trade in low-tech countries.
The strategic intention of the American template is to expand the interests of global digital hegemony through the free flow of data, and to ensure its security interests and digital hegemony through investment review mechanisms. The European Union, on the other hand, is taking advantage of the huge unified market to seek digital sovereignty and introduce more European standards to the world.
Internet companies are turning back to spring, and digital good governance must help
Half-Moon Talk: Recently, the mainland has tightened its regulatory policies for the Internet industry and continuously showed its sword in platform anti-monopoly. How do you view the new logic of the mainland's digital economy of "establishing rules with one hand and promoting development with the other"?
Zhang Monan: Although the mainland has not formed a clear governance paradigm like the United States and Europe, we are based on the dual advantages of industry and market to promote the development of industry norms. That is to say, we have both the advantages of the Internet industry similar to that of the United States, and at the same time similar to the European Union, which is a huge market for digital consumption and digital applications. For example, the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy" clearly has both the focus of these two aspects, on the one hand, to promote the potential growth of the digital industry, on the other hand, to increase efforts in market regulation and digital governance.
In the past two years, the mainland has formed some basic legal frameworks in the field of digital security, successively promulgating important laws and regulations such as the Cybersecurity Law, the Digital Security Law, and the Personal Information Protection Law, as well as new regulatory regulations such as the Measures for Security Assessment of Data Export and the Provisions on the Recommendation and Management of Internet Information Service Algorithms. In terms of protecting national digital sovereignty and digital security, the mainland has built a protective network.
Half Moon Talk: How should mainland digital governance respond to the challenges brought about by the digital game of major powers?
Zhang Monan: Stepping up the construction of China's digital governance system is not only a policy-level issue, but also a strategic issue, which should take into account the balance between the protection of individual rights and interests and industrial development, the balance between innovation and competition, and the balance between digital sovereignty and global governance.
In the face of the direct confrontation between the United States in the field of digital economy and the US strategy of "small courtyards and high walls", the mainland should actively respond to prevent "decoupling" and "locking". On the one hand, comprehensively improve the capacity and level of digital governance; On the other hand, the mainland's opening up of access to digital market services must be put on the agenda.
In addition, it actively participates in the negotiation and international cooperation of dual/multi-sectoral/multilateral digital governance rules. At the level of global multilateral and regional cooperation such as the WTO, RCEP, and the Belt and Road Initiative, China proposes digital trade rules, and actively benchmarks the requirements of high-standard digital trade and digital economy agreement rules such as CPTPP and DEPA, and promotes China's plan and China's proposition for global digital trade and digital governance.
Open, efficient and perfect digital good governance will inevitably build a sound policy support system and institutional supervision system, and create a good digital ecological environment. The warm breeze eventually encourages the flowers to blossom. With the blessing of digital good governance, mainland Internet enterprises can bid farewell to disorderly expansion and barbaric growth, and gradually get out of the pain of winter and embrace the Internet spring with the new temperament and new connotation of sustainable and high-quality development.
(Published in The Internal Edition of Half Moon Talk, No. 3, 2022)