The "15th Five-Year Plan" outlines a clear directive to "promote the integrated and coordinated development of large, small, and medium-sized enterprises" and to "drive innovation and healthy growth within the platform economy." In June 2026, seven government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Cyberspace Administration of China, jointly issued an action plan aimed at fostering collaboration between enterprises of varying sizes within the platform economy from 2026 to 2028. This strategic framework marks a significant shift in China's platform economy governance, moving from a focus on routine regulation towards empowering industrial synergy and cultivating new quality productive forces. Advancing this collaborative development is not only an inherent requirement for the platform economy's transition from "scale expansion" to "quality enhancement," but also a crucial pathway for deepening the integration of the digital and real economies during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, forging new competitive advantages for Chinese industry.
Building a Foundation for a Modern Industrial System
In the current landscape of rapid digital economic growth, fostering synergistic development between large and small enterprises in the platform economy holds significant strategic importance. The platform economy, a vital economic form of the digital age, has permeated all aspects of production, distribution, circulation, and consumption, achieving comprehensive coverage from consumer internet to industrial internet and from lifestyle services to manufacturing. It is profoundly reshaping industrial organization models and economic operational logic. The essence of new quality productive forces lies in technological innovation and the optimized allocation of production factors. By breaking down traditional corporate boundaries, the platform economy facilitates the flow and reconfiguration of knowledge, technology, and data across a broader spectrum, significantly lowering the innovation barriers and digital transformation costs for SMEs. Furthermore, large platform enterprises, acting as chain leaders, can drive collaborative research and application development with upstream and downstream SMEs, creating an innovation ecosystem across the entire industrial chain. This not only enhances the overall competitiveness of the chain but also provides new growth points for high-quality economic development.
A Key Engine for Activating Market Entities
The platform economy represents a symbiotic ecosystem where large platform enterprises coexist and thrive alongside a vast number of small and medium-sized merchants, service providers, and entrepreneurs. With the deep empowerment of artificial intelligence, competition among platform enterprises has escalated to a comprehensive contest involving innovation, industrial, supply, capital, and talent chains. Large platforms, leveraging their strengths in resource integration, technological accumulation, and market influence, undertake core functions such as industry chain coordination, resource allocation, and ecosystem construction. SMEs, with their flexible mechanisms, precise scenarios, and agile innovation, continuously inject fresh vitality into the platform ecosystem. Fostering a beneficial structure where large platforms stand tall and SMEs flourish broadly can effectively stimulate market vitality across all business entities.
Strong Support for Expanding Digital Economy Space
Looking at the domestic economic cycle, platform enterprises, with their nationwide service networks, promote deep collaboration across upstream and downstream industry chains through new models like shared manufacturing and personalized customization, achieving precise matching of supply and demand. Concurrently, platforms, in conjunction with SMEs, are expanding into emerging scenarios such as live-streaming e-commerce, instant retail, and the silver economy, streamlining the "last mile" of product circulation and fully leveraging the advantages of the super-large domestic market. In the context of the international cycle, the widespread use of digital tools like cross-border e-commerce platforms and payment systems facilitates the participation of Chinese SMEs in international competition and also builds bridges for foreign enterprises to access the Chinese market. This two-way flow of domestic and international resources and factors continually expands the boundaries of the digital economy.
Addressing Innovation and Development Gaps
In recent years, initial progress has been made in the collaborative development of large and small enterprises within China's platform economy. However, significant constraints remain, including insufficient innovation synergy, imbalanced development among market entities, and barriers to factor flow. A systematic approach is required to strengthen innovation collaboration, improve the innovation ecosystem, and deepen openness and sharing. Currently, there is a clear divergence in innovation development within the platform economy. Large platform enterprises possess strong financial and technological reserves but often lack application scenarios. Conversely, SMEs are rich in scenario-based creativity but constrained by research and development resources. This leads to an innovation mismatch where large enterprises have technology but no scenarios, and small enterprises have ideas but no resources. To address this, a stratified and categorized collaborative innovation system must be built. Large platform enterprises should intensify efforts in basic research and cutting-edge technology development, focusing on areas like general-purpose and industry-specific large models and AI agents, while tackling core technologies such as high-end chips and next-generation operating systems to solidify the digital technology foundation of the industry chain. Additionally, establishing an innovation collaboration mechanism where platforms issue challenges and SMEs respond is crucial. By publishing technology demand lists for specific industry scenarios, this mechanism can guide specialized and sophisticated SMEs to participate in tackling these challenges, creating a pattern of complementary development and win-win collaboration where large enterprises lead frontier innovation and SMEs excel in niche innovation.
Building a More Robust Innovation Ecosystem
Large platform enterprises occupy a core position in the ecosystem, wielding power over rule-making, traffic distribution, and data control, while numerous SMEs and market participants remain in a relatively weak position. This dynamic can lead to issues such as opaque service fees, arbitrary rule changes, and unfair traffic distribution. Therefore, it is necessary to further regulate platform business conduct, urging platforms and SMEs to adhere to fair competition rules. Platforms should open up core resources like supply chains, customer bases, and distribution channels to drive the transformation and upgrading of upstream and downstream SMEs. Simultaneously, efforts should be accelerated to improve standards for platform interoperability, promoting the development and application of protocols for AI agent interconnectivity to gradually dismantle ecological barriers between different platforms.
Deepening Openness and Sharing of Resources
Currently, large platform enterprises monopolize vast amounts of data, creating "data silos." Inconsistent technical standards and interface protocols across platforms further impede the free flow of production factors across the entire economy. A comprehensive push for the openness and sharing of digital factors is essential. In terms of technology, large platform enterprises should upgrade their digital service "toolboxes" and "service packages" to provide SMEs with low-cost, low-barrier development tools and technical components. Regarding data, platform enterprises should be guided to create trusted data spaces. While maintaining security bottom lines, they should explore innovative models for data resource compliance, circulation, and utilization, enabling SMEs to access data resources safely and conveniently, thereby fully unleashing the value of data elements. In terms of computing power, resources from different regions and platforms should be coordinated to provide inclusive, low-cost computing services to SMEs, addressing their shortage of computational resources.
Building a Comprehensive Institutional Framework
From an institutional perspective, promoting deep collaboration and integrated development between large and small enterprises in the platform economy requires constructing an all-encompassing, multi-layered, and long-term safeguard mechanism to ensure effective implementation of various initiatives. A key step is coordinating policy synergy across multiple domains to build an integrated support system. This involves establishing a cross-departmental coordination mechanism to align policy resources, issuing specific implementation rules, and creating a cohesive policy force. Differentiated support policies should be implemented: guiding large platforms to fulfill their chain-leader responsibilities and open digital resources, while providing SMEs with subsidies for digital transformation and fee reductions for platform participation. Policies supporting talent and finance should be improved by cultivating composite professionals in digital operations and big data analysis, and encouraging financial institutions to develop credit and order-based loan products leveraging platform transaction data. Another crucial element is refining the statistical and monitoring system for the platform economy. This requires unifying statistical standards and indicator frameworks, constructing a multi-dimensional indicator system covering transaction scale, innovation investment, and employment generation to enable cross-platform and cross-regional data comparability. Building a national integrated big data platform for platform economy monitoring would integrate data from multiple departments, dynamically track progress, and identify issues like innovation weaknesses and ecological imbalances. Establishing a regular effectiveness evaluation mechanism, publishing annual assessment reports, and promoting replicable collaborative innovation models will provide crucial evidence for policy adjustments and compliance ratings.
Perfecting Regulatory Oversight
Regulatory frameworks for the platform economy must be improved, balancing regulation with development. This includes refining laws, regulations, and standards, detailing the list of platform responsibilities, and accelerating the introduction of industry standards for resource opening, data sharing, and collaborative innovation. Platforms should be guided to establish internal compliance review mechanisms. Concurrently, smart and penetrative collaborative regulation should be advanced. By leveraging technologies like big data and AI, an integrated regulatory platform can be built to provide real-time warnings on issues such as traffic allocation, commission pricing, algorithmic monopolies, and exclusionary practices. Cross-departmental and cross-regional joint enforcement should be promoted to reduce redundant oversight. Ultimately, building a multi-stakeholder governance structure that integrates government regulation, platform self-discipline, industry self-governance, and social supervision will create a healthy ecosystem.