Self-employed biz to receive more support

China's self-employed businesses are set to receive stronger support from online platforms under a new action plan designed to ease market entry, lower operating costs and accelerate digital transformation.

"The measures are intended to ease financial pressure during the early stages of operation for self-employed businesses," the State Administration for Market Regulation said.

Recently released by the SAMR, the action plan calls on platform companies to offer concessions to self-employed businesses newly joining their services and reasonably reduce commissions, revenue-sharing charges, membership fees and costs for technical, information and marketing services.

"Self-employed businesses are the most flexible and differentiated part of a platform's supply base," said Zhang Hongyun, president of research at Beijing-based Minsheng Think Tank. "They meet long-tail demand that standardized brand-name products cannot cover, from handicrafts and local specialties to personalized services and neighborhood retail."

Supporting these businesses and improving their ability to operate online would make platform ecosystems broader and more diverse, Zhang added.

The initiative comes as more self-employed businesses combine online and offline operations. China registered 16.2 million new self-employed businesses in 2025, while the number operating via online trading platforms rose 14.7 percent year-on-year, according to the market regulator.

Yet moving a company's operations online still remains difficult for many small operators, which often lack dedicated technology teams and cannot afford costly software subscriptions. To address the problem, the plan calls on platforms to provide lightweight, low-cost digital tools that can help operators choose business locations and products, create marketing content, analyze data and handle customer inquiries through smart customer-service systems.

"The measures address the most pressing problem in the digital transformation of self-employed businesses by making sure the tools are affordable, easy to learn and practical to use," Zhang said. "Inclusive access to technology does not mean pushing the most advanced artificial intelligence tools to everyone. It means helping business owners find a toolbox suited to their needs."

Zhang also highlighted that the plan places greater emphasis on cultivating self-employed businesses recognized as well-known, distinctive, high-quality or innovative, calling on platforms to connect such operators with resources and support industries built around local specialties.

"This shows that targeted support based on business type and category is moving beyond recognition toward practical assistance," Zhang said. "Rather than merely assigning labels, the policy offers differentiated support packages. Measures covering online exposure, fee reductions and logistics improvements can be tailored in scale to the characteristics of different businesses. This is what precision governance should look like."

As of March, China had cultivated 184,000 such businesses, with a median operating history of 8.4 years, according to the administration, pointing to stable operations and sound development of the sector.

Looking ahead, the action plan aims to deliver a series of concrete results by the end of 2027, including more targeted and readily accessible support measures, a group of high-quality merchants with distinctive strengths and stronger digital capabilities, practical training programs, visible digital application scenarios, and replicable examples of innovation and business integration.