China’s sharing economy will see new development opportunities after the novel coronavirus epidemic subsides, industry insiders predicted.

Photo taken on May 24, 2017 shows a student using shared washing machine in a university in east China's Shanghai.  (Xinhua/Ding Ting)

According to a recent report on the sharing economy issued by the think tank State Information Center, fields including shared healthcare, online education and food delivery saw spikes in both traffic and transaction volumes as people moved their consumption activities online.

Ping An Good Doctor, an online healthcare platform, recorded more than 1.1 billion visits, 10 times more new users, and nine times more inquiries than before on a daily basis.

Orders at the mini-program for the fresh food delivery platform Missfresh surged by 309 percent in the first six days after Chinese New Year’s Eve.

Meanwhile, retailers including Alibaba’s offline fresh food supermarket chain Hema Fresh and the country’s catering industry have joined forces by sharing personnel to meet the challenges brought by the outbreak.

In the fight against the epidemic, internet-based technologies have been used in more fields, and people are cultivating better online consumption habits, said Yu Fengxia, deputy director of the Sharing Economy Research Center under the State Information Center, adding that these favorable conditions will bring new opportunities to the sharing economy in the future.

Furthermore, industrial internet, an important pillar of shared manufacturing, is also seeing new development opportunities.

Institutional innovation should be enhanced to meet the requirements for boosting economic development amid the epidemic prevention and control drive, according to Yu.

East China’s Shanghai and central China’s Wuhan have been rolling out related policies to achieve this aim. For example, internet-based rehabilitation services are covered by medical insurance, which will further boost the development of shared healthcare.

Yu is upbeat about the prospects for China’s sharing economy, adding that greater policy support for the sector, in aspects including business environment, flexible employment and consumption, will lead to new sharing services and models.