Mixed impact on online business

Editor's Note: Online businesses, especially online education, office and shopping, have boomed in the wake of the novel coronavirus epidemic in China and beyond. Will this bring about lasting changes in China’s economic landscape? Three experts share their views on the issue with China Daily’s Liu Jianna. Excerpts follow:

Compared with offline businesses, internet-based businesses are not only more efficient and cost-effective but also enable technological breakthroughs which were unimaginable in the past. For instance, thanks to the application of technologies including big data and the internet of things, consumers now know the transportation route, raw materials and the industrial chain of the products they buy online, which has greatly improved transparency and guaranteed due liability.

This is not just a simple offline-to-online transformation, but a reshaping of the whole industrial chain. And without undermining the threats posed by the novel coronavirus outbreak, we should not ignore the opportunities it has created for the development of the digital economy.

There is a wide consensus on the importance of developing the digital economy. The problem is that not all people know how to apply and operate advanced technologies and there is a lack of mature business and management models to effectively transform the conventional economy. The epidemic is expected to prompt traditional industries to digitalize faster and explore more ways to digitalize their operations as shown by the development of online medical care in recent days.

The combat against this epidemic has greatly been promoting the development of digital society such as online business and online office and online education, and has accelerated the maturity of the social credit system. The credit sysmanufacturing tem can quickly reduce the cost of social management and production management. But while digitalizing their operations, enterprises should be fully aware of the risks since the supporting policies, laws and rules may lag behind the development of businesses.

Online businesses will not remain unscathed by the novel coronavirus outbreak even though they may be less affected than offline businesses, particularly because many people’s incomes are expected to be significantly reduced, and some people could even lose their jobs.

Online businesses cannot possibly continue to flourish at a time when people’s incomes drop and the overall economy takes a turn for the worse.

In the following months, online education, telecommuting and shopping may remain popular, but the epidemic is likely to affect China’s economic growth in the first quarter of 2020 with the service and

Chen Fengying, a senior researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations sectors taking the biggest hits, even in the best-case scenario. So production should be resumed or increased only after people’s safety is ensured with strict measures.

The key is to strike a balance between productivity and people’s health and the central and local governments’ different concerns. For those enterprises that have been the worst affected by the epidemic, the central government has already introduced support policies. But whether the local finance departments can strictly implement those policies in these difficult times remains to be seen.