（Photo/Xinhua)

China’s prospering internet economy is driving the country’s employment, but more importantly, it is creating more flexible employment opportunities.

Since 2004, when Chinese digital payment platform Alipay started operation, nearly 7 million Chinese people had secured part-time and full-time jobs in the 40-something new occupations created by or related to the platform.

According to a recent report on part-time employment in China’s county-level regions, over half of the people from these regions earned extra money in their spare time, and 35.11 percent of this group were working in internet-related industries.

These jobs include drivers of ride-hailing companies as well as couriers of food delivery and express parcels. Besides, software developers for money reception QR-code systems, payment platforms promoters, and bus route planners are also jobs newly created by the internet economy. Around one-third of these jobs can be done online.

Many forms of employment were restricted by location, but the internet has enabled these occupations to develop rapidly, free from such restrictions, said Yu Qingquan, an expert on social security.

Feng Xiliang, dean of the School of Labor Economics, Capital University of Economics and Business, noted that the creation of these jobs is indeed a process of breakdown and re-integration of labor by new technologies.

“It is such a process that has further segmented the labor force, which leads to improvement of production efficiency,” Feng said.

These newly created jobs enable people to bring their advantages into full play and realize their value in flexible employment, Yu explained, adding that digital economy, while triggering the industrial transformation, is also making changes to the structure of human resources.

Relevant data show that about half of these new jobs were taken by people from medium- and small-sized cities. 88.5 percent of the 24,000 part-time online customer service specialists of Alipay were from second- to fifth-tier cities.

Feng explained that new occupations are now a pillar for local economies of small- and medium-sized cities that saw relatively slower development of the service industry.

“The transition from manufacturing to service industry is a law of nature for economic development, and the tertiary industry will take a larger share in the national economy going forward,” he said.

Many young migrant workers, mostly from the countryside, have worked or lived in urban areas, Feng said, adding that such new occupations offer them a new channel of employment as they have little knowledge of farming.