BEIJING: From ride-hailing business to online auctioneers, sharing platforms in China have created a market worth USD 298 billion in 2015, according to an official report today. There are 50 million sharing business providers in China and they have more than 500 million consumers, according to a report by . The sharing economy generating a revenue of 1.95 trillion yuan satisfies a variety of needs in daily life and business. In addition to taxi-hailing apps such as Didi, product, knowledge and service-based providers have mushroomed on the Internet, said Yang Yixin, deputy secretary-general of the told the media. Zhang Xinhong, with the National Information Center's Information Research Department, said China's sharing economy would grow at an annual rate of 40 per cent in the next five years, and would take up more than 10 per cent of China's by 2020. Taxi-hailing app Didi, the result of a merger between two separate startups in early 2015, raised tens of billions of last year from domestic and overseas investors. Li Jianhua, chief development officer of Didi, said the hailing service received 1.4 billion calls in 2015, a figure Li expects to double by 2016. The report forecast that in the next decade, five to 10 firms with similar value and influence as Didi will establish themselves in the sharing economy.
According to a new report from China’s National Information Centre, sharing economy platforms in the county created a market worth $298bn in 2015, which is set to grow at an annual rate of 40% over the next five years, accounting for over 10% of China’s total GDP by 2020. The report, entitled “Sharing Economy Development and Growth in China”, also revealed that there are currently more than 100 million people who use online platforms, including social media, as their main source of income.