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Wang Yong, Associate Professor of Institute of Economics, Tsinghua University, Talked about the Platform Economy and Employment in a CCTV Interview

On August 6, 2020, Wang Yong, Associate Professor of Institute of Economics, Tsinghua University, was interviewed by CCTV-2 on the topic of platform economy and employment.
In the interview, Wang Yong first pointed out that on July 15, 13 departments including the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the Opinions on Supporting the Healthy Development of New Formats and New Models and Activating Consumer Market to Promote Employment Expansion to encourage the development of “new individual economy”, “sideline innovation”, “microeconomy” and other new formats, which is an important measure to stabilize employment.
Wang Yong believed that compared with the traditional individual economy, the new one is characterized by Internet support and platform empowerment. At present, many new formats have emerged in the development of China’s digital economy, such as sharing economy and the livestreaming economy. These new formats are often carried out based on the network platform, resulting in the emergence of a new individual economy of “platform + individual”, such as online car-hailing drivers, online distribution staff, Internet celebrities for selling goods, live streaming and rewarding, and knowledge payment. These new individual economies have offered a large number of jobs. For instance, according to the latest data disclosed by Didi, there are more than 10 million drivers on its platform, and it has led to the employment of more than 6 million people in related industries. Therefore, the most important significance of encouraging the development of new individual economy is to stabilize employment.
In the long run, encouraging the development of new individual economy will also promote the formation of new employment mode. In the traditional industrial economy, factory is the carrier of economic activities, which formed the employment mode of “company + employee”. In the digital economy, platform is also an important carrier to carry out economic activities, and gradually formed a new employment model of platform + individual. This new employment model is considered by economists as a new labor relationship suitable for the development of digital economy.
In addition, Wang Yong said that the most important thing to note in the development of new individual economy was the protection of the rights and interests of workers. In this regard, the government and the market can play a dual role. For the government, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security should introduce relevant policies. For example, the insured amount of five social insurances including social security and medical insurance can be appropriately reduced or exempted. From a market perspective, some companies engaged in labor services can be encouraged to develop new types of labor services through network technology.
Profile of Wang Yong:
Wang Yong, Associate Professor of Institute of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Deputy Head of Institute of Economics, Associate Dean of IMER, graduated from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University and was the postdoctoral fellow of Department of Economics of Harvard University. He focuses on the research on the enterprise theory, digital economy and mixed ownership reform.
In recent years, he has published more than 40 high-quality articles in Economic Research Journal, International Review of Economics and Finance and other Chinese and English journals, published Cyber Economy, Platform Governance, Next Step of Mixed-ownership Reform, Entrepreneurship and Chinese Economy and other works, and presided over a number of projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China.