Accelerate the coordinated development of large, medium, and small enterprises in the platform economy
2026-08-25
The outline of the 15th Five Year Plan clearly proposes to "promote the coordinated and integrated development of large, medium, and small enterprises" and "promote innovation and healthy development of the platform economy". In June 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and seven other departments jointly issued the "Action Plan for Promoting the Coordinated Development of Large, Medium, and Small Enterprises in the Platform Economy (2026-2028)", which made systematic institutional arrangements around the coordinated development of large, medium, and small enterprises in the platform economy field, marking a new stage in China's platform economy governance from normalized and standardized supervision to empowering industrial collaboration and cultivating new quality productivity. In this context, promoting the coordinated development of large, medium, and small enterprises is not only an inherent requirement for the platform economy to move from "scale expansion" to "quality leap", but also a necessary path to promote the deep integration of the real economy and digital economy and forge new competitive advantages for China's industries during the "15th Five Year Plan" period.
One
In the current rapid development of the digital economy, promoting the coordinated development of large, medium, and small enterprises in the platform economy has important strategic significance.
The key path to consolidating the modern industrial system. As an important economic form in the digital era, the platform economy has fully penetrated the production, distribution, circulation, consumption and other links, realizing the full coverage from the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet, from life services to industrial manufacturing, and profoundly reshaping the industrial organization model and economic operation logic. The core of new quality productivity lies in technological innovation and optimized allocation of production factors. The platform economy breaks through traditional enterprise boundaries, promotes the flow and reorganization of production factors such as knowledge, technology, and data on a wider scale, and significantly reduces the innovation threshold and digital transformation costs for small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, large platform enterprises play a leading role as chain owners, leading the joint development and application promotion of technology by small and medium-sized enterprises upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. This can form an innovative ecosystem for the entire industrial chain, not only enhancing the overall competitiveness of the industrial chain, but also providing new growth points for high-quality economic development.
An important lever to stimulate the vitality of diversified business entities. The platform economy is an economic ecosystem where large platform enterprises coexist and prosper with a massive number of small and medium-sized merchants, service providers, and entrepreneurs. With the deep empowerment of artificial intelligence, the competition among platform enterprises has upgraded to a comprehensive competition around the innovation chain, industry chain, supply chain, capital chain, and talent chain. Large platform enterprises, relying on resource integration, technological accumulation, and market influence, undertake core functions such as industrial chain coordination, resource allocation, and ecological construction; Small and medium-sized enterprises, with their advantages of flexible mechanisms, precise scenarios, and agile innovation, continue to inject fresh vitality into the platform ecosystem. By promoting the formation of a benign development pattern where large platforms stand tall and small and medium-sized enterprises dominate, it can effectively stimulate the market vitality of business entities.
Strong support for expanding the development space of the digital economy. From the perspective of the domestic circulation, platform enterprises rely on a nationwide service network and promote deep collaboration between upstream and downstream industrial chains through new models such as shared manufacturing and personalized customization, achieving precise supply-demand matching. At the same time, the platform collaborates with small and medium-sized enterprises to expand into emerging scenarios such as live streaming e-commerce, instant retail, and silver economy, bridging the "last mile" of commodity circulation and fully unleashing the advantages of a super large market. From the perspective of international circulation, the widespread application of digital tools such as cross-border e-commerce platforms and cross-border payment systems provides convenience for Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in international competition, and also builds bridges for foreign enterprises to enter the Chinese market. This two-way flow of domestic and foreign resource elements continues to expand the development boundaries of the digital economy.
two
In recent years, the coordinated development of large, medium, and small enterprises in China's platform economy has shown initial results. However, it still faces practical constraints such as insufficient innovation coordination, imbalanced development of the main body, and obstructed flow of factors. It is urgent to promote innovation coordination, improve innovation ecology, and deepen openness and sharing with a systematic approach.
Further strengthen innovation collaboration. There is a clear differentiation in the innovation and development of the current platform economy. Large platform enterprises have strong financial and technological reserves but insufficient landing scenarios, while small and medium-sized enterprises have rich creative scenarios but are constrained by research and development resources, leading to the innovation mismatch dilemma of "large enterprises have technology but no scenarios, and small enterprises have creativity but no resources". To solve this problem, it is necessary to construct a hierarchical and classified global collaborative innovation system. On the one hand, large platform enterprises are increasing their efforts in basic research and cutting-edge technology breakthroughs, focusing on the layout of general and industry models, intelligent agents and other AI cutting-edge fields, tackling key core technologies such as high-end chips and next-generation operating systems, and building a solid foundation for digital technology in the industrial chain. On the other hand, establish an innovative collaborative mechanism of "platform listing and small and medium-sized enterprise listing", release technology demand lists around industry segmentation scenarios, guide "specialized, refined, unique and new" small and medium-sized enterprises that are deeply involved in segmentation fields to participate in the listing and research, and form a staggered development and collaborative win-win pattern where large enterprises lead cutting-edge innovation and small and medium-sized enterprises deeply engage in segmentation innovation.
Further improve the innovation ecosystem. Large platform enterprises are at the core of the ecosystem, holding core powers such as rule making, traffic allocation, and data control; Massive small and medium-sized businesses and other market entities are in a relatively weak position. In this situation, it is easy to encounter problems such as opaque platform service fees, arbitrary rule adjustments, and unfair traffic distribution. Therefore, it is necessary to further regulate platform business behavior, urge platforms and small and medium-sized enterprises to jointly abide by fair competition rules, open up core resources such as supply chains, customers, and channels, and drive the transformation and upgrading of upstream and downstream small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, we should accelerate the improvement of the platform interconnection standard system, promote the development and application of intelligent agent interconnection protocols, and gradually break down the ecological barriers between different platforms.
Further deepen openness and sharing. At present, large platform enterprises monopolize a large amount of data resources, forming a "data island", and the technical standards and interface protocols of various platforms are not unified, which hinders the free flow of elements in the entire domain. This requires comprehensive promotion of open sharing of digital elements. At the level of technological openness, we will promote large platform enterprises to upgrade and create a "toolbox" and "service package" for digital intelligence services, providing low-cost and low threshold development tools and technical components to small and medium-sized enterprises. At the level of data openness, guide platform enterprises to create a trustworthy data space, explore innovative models for data resource compliance and circulation utilization while maintaining security bottom lines, and enable small and medium-sized enterprises to safely and conveniently access data resources, fully unleashing the value of data elements. At the level of open computing power, we will coordinate computing resources from different regions and platforms, provide inclusive and low-cost computing services to small and medium-sized enterprises, and solve the problem of computing power shortage for small and medium-sized enterprises.
three
From an institutional perspective, promoting the deep collaboration and integrated development of large, medium, and small enterprises in the platform economy requires the establishment of a comprehensive, multi-level, and long-term guarantee mechanism to ensure that all measures are implemented effectively.
Coordinate policies across multiple fields and build an integrated policy support system. Establish a cross departmental normalized coordination mechanism, coordinate various policy resources, issue special supporting implementation rules, and form a policy synergy of top-down and departmental linkage. Implement differentiated support policies with hierarchical classification, focusing on guiding large platform enterprises to fulfill their chain owner responsibilities and open up digital resources; Implement policies such as digital transformation subsidies and platform entry fee reductions for small and medium-sized enterprises to reduce participation costs. Improve the supporting policies for talent and finance, cultivate composite talents such as digital operations and big data analysis, and encourage financial institutions to develop characteristic financial products such as credit loans and order loans based on platform transaction data.
Improve the platform economy statistical monitoring system and consolidate the data foundation for collaborative development. Unify the statistical caliber and indicator system of the platform economy, construct a multidimensional indicator system covering transaction scale, innovation investment, employment driving, etc., and achieve cross platform and cross regional data comparability and measurability. Build a national integrated platform for economic monitoring big data, integrate data from multiple departments, dynamically track the progress of collaborative development, and accurately identify issues such as weak innovation and ecological imbalance. Establish a normalized effectiveness evaluation mechanism, regularly release annual evaluation reports, select and promote replicable collaborative innovation models, and use the evaluation results as an important basis for policy adjustments and compliance ratings.
Establish a sound regulatory system for the platform economy, and adhere to a balance between standardization and development. Improve the legal, regulatory, and standard system for platform supervision. Refine the list of responsibilities for platform entities, accelerate the introduction of industry standards for platform resource openness, data sharing, collaborative innovation, etc., and guide platforms to establish internal compliance review mechanisms. Promote intelligent and transparent collaborative supervision. Using technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to build an integrated regulatory platform, achieving real-time warning of traffic distribution, commission pricing, algorithm monopoly, exclusive competition, and other behaviors, promoting cross departmental and cross regional joint law enforcement, reducing duplicate supervision and multi head inspections. Build a diversified collaborative governance pattern, forming a good ecology of government supervision, platform autonomy, industry self-discipline, and social supervision. (Outlook New Era)
Author: Wang Jinqiu (Associate Professor at the School of Economics, Beijing Technology and Business University)
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