China’s sharing economy worth $298 bn: Report

From ride-hailing business to online auctioneers, sharing economy platforms in China have created a market worth $298 billion in 2015, according to an official report on Sunday. There are 50 million sharing business providers in China and they have more than 500 million consumers, according to a report by National Information Centre.

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 China Internet Association 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 GDP by 2020.

Taxi-hailing app Didi, the result of a merger between two separate startups in early 2015, raised tens of billions of US dollars 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.