Better understanding, better future

Foreign Internet companies can choose to cooperate with China government.

As open and sharing is in the gene of Internet, as long as Internet is helping solve economic or social problems, the way of Internet thinking of open and sharing will penetrate not only into daily life but also people's mind.

Compared with the United States and other Western countries, China has a strong government and the strong government is attaching a great importance to its "Internet +" strategy. The government believes that its Internet industry is well developed and by applying it to other industries can help China's economic transition from the old pattern that is driven by investment and export to a consumption-driven one.

China has realized that a consumption-driven economic pattern cannot simply function by reforms on consumption side, instead they need to reform from supply side to cut excess capacity, reduce manufacturing cost and create new demand by providing new products. As Internet can play a great role in collecting data of customer demand, the strategy is reasonable.

The "Internet +" strategy, which can break into three parts is a much bigger part of the story that can change common people's life.

Part I: Internet + service

The service department in China has just surpassed 50 percent. It will become more important when many new products activities in traditional manufacturing department are increasingly becoming outsourcing services, such as accounting, design, marketing, human resource, calling center, etc. Most of these services can be totally traded online, which means Internet can promote division of labor and sales transactions.

Part II: Internet + manufacturing

The reason why China has such a big excess producing capacity is because manufacturers are finding it difficult to find demand or are too slow to adjust changing demand. It is even harder for them to create new demand. It is Internet that can easily collect demand information. With Internet's help, they can find demand domestic or abroad for their old or new products, be quicker in adjusting their manufacturing to changes in demand and have better chances to promote new products to create new demand.

Part III: Internet + agriculture

China has a huge rural population. China's agricultural competitiveness can be much enhanced by turning to focus on labor intensive diversified commercial crops. Though its difficult is to meet various produces of small amounts with various demands of small groups of people, with China's advanced Internet the mission becomes much possible. Internet can also help rural people in education, shopping, entertainment and technical assistance.

We can expect that the "Internet +" strategy will enhance China's competitiveness in a big scale, improve a great many people's daily lives and help a lot of people fulfill their dreams. The practical attitude towards complicated situations reflects an aspect of Chinese culture, which needs Westerners to take into consideration before delivering speeches.

As long as China keeps using Internet to solve problems and make a better life, the future will be optimistic. By more frequent small innovations, the society will accumulate big improvement in the long run, which will create new tools to fix old problems and create new opportunities.

When there are complicated problems that we do not feel to have enough wisdom to solve it once for all, to postpone it to a riper situation can be a tactics that needs courage.

Internet essentially belongs to all mankind. China large-scale applications of Internet can not only bringing more business ideas, more technological innovations and cheaper technological applications but also management experience to the Internet community, which is a welcome and delighting thing.

The author is a lecturer at the Management School of the Shanghai University and a research fellow at the China Europe International Business School Lujiazui International Finance Research Center. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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