Using the advantages of digital platform enterprises to promote common prosperity

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out the need to accelerate the development of the digital economy, promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, and create a digital industry cluster with international competitiveness. In 2021, the scale of China's digital economy reached 45.5 trillion yuan, accounting for 39.8% of GDP. The digital economy has become one of the main engines driving economic growth. Supporting the further development of the digital economy is in line with China's goal of accelerating the construction of a new development pattern and promoting high-quality development, while also requiring the development of the digital economy to serve the overall goals of the new development stage.

 

The most important enterprise entities in digital economic activities are digital platform enterprises. Digital platform enterprises refer to organizations that use digital technology for production and services, as well as providing services for the production and services of other enterprises. In recent years, many digital platform enterprises have responded to the call for national common prosperity and rural revitalization, actively exploring the concept of "technology for good" and forming many practical cases. In the process of promoting common prosperity, it is necessary and capable for digital platform enterprises to deeply participate and use their advantages to help achieve common prosperity.

 

Creating new dividends through digital technology

 

The advantage of digital technology is the first advantage for digital platform enterprises to help achieve common prosperity. The emergence and application of digital technology have made people's interaction forms no longer limited to face-to-face interactions offline. Online interactions across spaces not only connect groups that were previously unable to form intersections, but also further affect the construction of offline relationships. In the process of common prosperity, digital technology is better at creating new dividends, which is reflected in:

 

Firstly, digital technology creates growth opportunities by creating new connections. The application of digital technology provides stable and efficient interaction opportunities for groups that were previously difficult to form interactions, thereby expanding the subjects involved in economic activities. This new form of connection not only achieves more efficient personalized demand matching, but also provides development opportunities for more groups. Taking the rise of e-commerce villages as an example, digital platforms have provided trading opportunities for rural producers who previously had difficulty interacting with urban consumer groups, thereby promoting the development and transformation of some rural characteristic industries.

 

Secondly, digital technology optimizes the fulfillment conditions by reconstructing existing relationships. While bringing new development opportunities, digital technology also helps different entities to turn these opportunities into tangible benefits. In business activities, digital technology becomes an important helper to assist businesses in making production and commercial decisions by reconstructing the economic relationships in existing business activities. For example, most e-commerce platforms provide backend data analysis assistants for merchants to analyze current market trends and future development directions. In the pre digital era, businesses usually needed to equip professional talent teams to complete this data analysis work. However, with the assistance of digital technology, more detailed and intuitive market data analysis can be directly achieved through software tools, providing a data foundation for more groups to profit in the digital society.

 

Thirdly, digital technology has emerged as a technological dividend by lowering entry barriers. Common prosperity first requires "making the cake bigger". It should be emphasized that "cake" cannot rely solely on a small number of subjects to make, which may bring potential social conflicts in the "cake distribution" stage. Therefore, the new stage of the "cake" needs to rely on as many entities as possible to grow together, which requires digital technology to focus on lowering the entry threshold for economic activities and allowing more groups to participate in the emergence of technological dividends. Throughout the development of e-commerce platforms and live streaming economy, popularity is the key to these economic activities becoming mainstream. In the next stage, digital technology should focus more on preventing the emergence of the "Matthew effect" and accommodating more subjects.

 

Improve the existing dividend distribution plan through the platform system

 

The advantage of platform system is the second advantage of digital platform enterprises in promoting common prosperity. Unlike the bureaucratic and market-oriented systems, the core of the platform system lies in the collaboration of multiple entities. The platform plays both the role of setting organizational goals and creating market rules. Although the platform usually conducts business activities in its own established market field, it needs to continuously attract participants to maintain its organizational operation. In the process of common prosperity, the platform system naturally fits the characteristics of multi-party participation, co construction and sharing, and can also shape the actors within the platform based on the goal of common prosperity, which is reflected in:

 

Firstly, the platform system arrangement affects the subject's share of profits. Many digital platforms are often criticized for the uneven profits of platform related entities, especially some studies have focused on the platform's excessive profit share, which in turn affects the profits of both trading parties on the platform. The technology dividend distribution plan formulated by the platform should ensure relative completeness, benefit more entities, and ensure the normal development of enterprises, focusing more on the long-term development of the real economy rather than short-term financial capital returns.

 

Secondly, the platform's institutional arrangements stabilize the expectations and confidence of profitable entities. As creators of the online market space, the rules formulated by the platform directly affect the confidence of participating parties in judging the market prospects, especially as the platform system gradually penetrates into all aspects of people's lives, many people's online trading behavior far exceeds their offline trading behavior. Therefore, platform operators need to be aware of the public stability of platform operations, and cannot rely solely on short-term profits to drive frequent changes in the interactive rules of the online space. It is crucial to stabilize the expectations of platform participants for future business activities.

 

Finally, platform institutional arrangements affect the preferences of profit-making entities. It is precisely because of the decisive role of platforms in online interaction rules that platforms should aim for "technology for good" and guide participants to practice social responsibility based on the original drive of maximizing profits. In recent years, many Internet platforms have begun to guide enterprises to participate in public welfare activities by rewarding traffic, or allocate more traffic to more public welfare products. Such "good" modifications to online space interaction rules deserve recognition and promotion.

 

Opportunities to emerge through enterprise connections and sharing of dividends

 

The key to effectively utilizing digital technology and platform tools still lies in the digital platform enterprises themselves. The close connection between digital platform enterprises and various levels of markets is the third advantage of digital platform enterprises in promoting common prosperity. Due to the penetration of digital technology and the inclusiveness of platform tools, digital platform enterprises are able to integrate multidimensional information, mobilize more participants, empower various groups based on their own capabilities, participate in the mining, realization, and distribution of technological dividends, and effectively involve multiple entities in the sharing of emerging dividends, forming an industrial and social ecology of dividend sharing. This is specifically reflected in:

 

Firstly, improve business operations through digital capabilities. According to statistics, the global real-time data volume in 2021 alone reached 16ZB (1ZB is approximately equivalent to 1 trillion GB), accounting for 20% of the current global data volume. Massive data contains vast potential technological dividends, and digital platform enterprises are not only important entities in data production, but also in data analysis. With the gradual popularization of the industrial Internet, the digital economy has been closely integrated with the development of the real economy. Massive data can provide solid data basis for diagnosing market development strategies and improving business issues. Therefore, digital platform enterprises need to continuously empower the enterprises on the platform.

 

Secondly, cleverly use platform arrangements to highlight the direction of dividends. Digital platform enterprises play an irreplaceable role in discovering new directions of dividend emergence, namely a series of new growth points for common prosperity. For data analysis, digital platform enterprises should make good use of platform tools to accommodate more participating entities to jointly explore, and gather more entities through platform rule arrangements to turn these emerging dividend directions into reality. The platform usually does not have efficient production capacity, but it is very important to provide this information to capable manufacturers inside and outside the platform. Some e-commerce platforms engage in new retail business based on data, which is a practice of this type of activity: through data analysis, they discover a gap in a certain type of product and actively seek manufacturers who can make up for this gap, match the unfinished real needs in the market, and share the emerging technological dividends with more entities.

 

Thirdly, promote product standards based on social responsibility. It is precisely because of the dual advantages of data and platform that digital platform enterprises are often able to capture unrealized real needs first, and the initiative to choose who to cooperate with is in the hands of digital platform enterprises. At the same time, as the most information rich party, digital platform enterprises usually have a better understanding of consumer preferences. In the context of common prosperity, digital platform enterprises should be encouraged to fulfill their social responsibilities and promote product standards for relatively underdeveloped areas. For example, many rural areas do not lack production and processing capabilities, but because they do not understand the needs of urban consumers and do not know how to carry out production, production capacity is also potential. In recent years, some digital platform enterprises have actively participated in the process of rural revitalization, using their own understanding of product standards to assist rural areas in establishing full process product production and processing standards that meet consumer preferences. They have turned agricultural products that could only obtain the bottom stream value of the product chain into internet famous products and earned excess profits.

 

Overall, the advantages of digital platform enterprises are not only essential in the construction of common prosperity, but also have a natural affinity with the process of common prosperity. It cannot be denied that most digital platform companies are still in the exploratory stage, facing the tension between business models and social responsibility. Digital platform enterprises can only truly integrate into the construction of common prosperity by first clarifying their own advantages and roles in it.