“Sharing economy” first entered the government work report in 2016 - “Supporting the development of a sharing economy and improving the efficiency of resource usage to make more people participate and become more affluent.”

According to statistics from market research organizations, the trading scale of the sharing economy in the global market reached $810 billion in 2015. Risk investment in the sharing economy increased more than five-fold from 2014 to 2015.

Sharing economy is a market model that refers to individuals, organizations or companies making money by sharing unused resources or cognitive surplus through social media, with a marginal cost lower than using professional organizers. The entity is replacing buying with borrowing. Sun Yi, a senior researcher at Tencent Research Institute, said that sharing economy appeared around 2000, while its actual growth appeared after the economic crisis in 2008.

From a worldwide perspective, the US is the development origin of sharing economy, and is also the country with the most mature development in the field. In China, sharing economy is off to a fast start.

Another engine driving the fast development of sharing economy is the popularity of the Internet. Individual customers are most familiar with traveling and accommodation in this field. Yet the future of sharing economy is more than this.

On one side, not only individual consumers, but companies are entering the sharing economy. On the other side, “The things being shared are becoming abundant. Now it’s not only bartering, but sharing knowledge, demand, data and supply,” said Lyu Fuyu, a professor at the School of Economy and Management at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering.

“Supervision and related regulations should continue to be developed for the sharing economy,” said Pony Ma, chairman of Tencent Holdings.

“A large number of new merging formats have emerged, which breaks the traditional management pattern. Regarding regulations, the most prominent problem is the lack of credit investigation. We need to promote the connection of all kinds of information platforms, enhance credit recording, risk warning and online information disclosure,” he said.