China News Service, Shanghai, November 6th. Question: Why does Shanghai want to grab this ticket for future industries?
——Exclusive interview with Zhao Weixing, counselor of Shanghai Municipal Government
China News Service reporter Chen Jing
When the big model learns to write code, do design, edit videos, and run customer service, the smallest form of the "company" is being rewritten. In the past, people used to say that "you can start a business by building a team"; now, one person and a set of AI tools can run the entire chain of market analysis, product development, content production, and marketing delivery. This form, legally called a "One Person Company" (OPC), has become a new entrepreneurial unit in the AI era.
Is OPC in the AI era just an upgraded version of freelancing, or is it a "cell-level" organization of new productivity? Why should a megacity like Shanghai include OPC in the construction of industrial ecology and system innovation? Zhao Weixing, counselor of the Shanghai Municipal Government, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Service's "East-West Question" to explain this.
The interview transcript is summarized as follows:
Reporter from China News Service: In the AI era, “one-person companies” are emerging around the world. Does this mean that production organizations are undergoing restructuring? What did the East and the West contribute?
Zhao Weixing: Without AI, there would be no “one-person company” (OPC). In terms of productivity, artificial intelligence is the most profound revolution of mankind to date, and the mode of production will inevitably undergo major changes. OPC is one of the phenomena worthy of attention. It is a reconstruction of human production organization and a paradigm shift in which the basic unit of production shifts from "hierarchical enterprise organization" to "individual capability node + digital ecological collaboration".
In recent years, AI tools have begun to take on more complete work tasks. With the help of AI, one person can complete some tasks that used to require the cooperation of multiple people, and the conditions for independent operation have been greatly improved.
Regarding OPC, I mainly focus on four issues. The first is the profound changes in productivity and production relations, the second is the intrinsic connection between industrial changes and industrial ecology, the third is the development environment of urban vitality and personal motivation, and the fourth is short-term phenomena and possible trends in the future.
In countries in Europe and the United States, OPC provides a tool for “amplification of individual capabilities”. It has accumulated earlier in basic models, development tools, independent developer communities and global service facilities, and has more industrial application scenarios and digital infrastructure. China provides the ecological soil for OPC to develop "massive node networking", thus promoting the new form of production organization from "enterprise centralization" to "node distribution".
China News Service reporter: What differences will OPC create in different social environments in China and the West?
Zhao Weixing: The tools and business methods used by both parties have many similarities. The differences are reflected in culture, entrepreneurial motivations and social expectations.
From the perspective of cultural differences, Western OPC is an AI extension of individualistic business civilization, while what China's OPC "grows out" is the cellular unit of the industry, which is a lightweight sinking of strong industrial organizational capabilities. From the perspective of entrepreneurial motivations and social expectations, the West focuses on individual independent choices: some people hope to maintain small-scale operations, while others want to exit by selling products or businesses and then start new projects. The independent business approach represented by Dutch independent developer Pieter Levels is one of the options and cannot be generalized for all Western entrepreneurs. China is more concerned about whether OPC can help a larger group of people leverage their professional advantages and knowledge transformation capabilities to create motivation for entrepreneurship and employment.
For professionals who have resigned from large companies, OPC provides another possibility for career change; for college graduates, the application of AI tools reduces part of the business development and trial-and-error costs. Developers can live in small and medium-sized cities or even villages, and also serve customers in other cities and even overseas. China's development of OPC should focus more on employment and inclusive benefits. If more ordinary workers can gain new opportunities through AI, the benefits of technological progress can reach a wider range of people.
China News Service reporter: Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou and other cities are exploring OPC action plans, entrepreneurship facilitation and community building. Silicon Valley, London, and Singapore have also formed entrepreneurial ecosystems with their own characteristics. What are the advantages of Shanghai? What experiences are worth learning from?
Zhao Weixing: Drawing on the experience and practices of cities at home and abroad, Shanghai can focus on professional services and international business. It must use existing industrial resources to form a sustainable business. It can integrate cross-border payments, taxation, law and international talent exchanges, and reduce the cost of entrepreneurs looking for services one by one.
Community construction in Suzhou, exploration of entrepreneurship facilitation in Hangzhou, and related actions in Shenzhen and other places have broadened the development space of OPC. Its common value is to effectively integrate the space, tools, services and communication opportunities needed for personal entrepreneurship. For Shanghai, what needs to be considered is which practices can be combined with local industries and which needs are not fully covered by existing services.
Shanghai’s advantages include a complete range of industrial categories and a solid foundation of professional services. Fields such as finance, biomedicine, integrated circuits, high-end manufacturing, design, and cultural and creative industries have both professional talents and relatively complex business needs. International service is another advantage. The gathering of multinational enterprises and international talents provides the basis for entrepreneurial activities in overseas markets, and there are many financial, legal, accounting and consulting institutions to provide support in cross-border collection, taxation, intellectual property and other aspects. The key is whether these services can be provided in a way that is affordable and accessible to individuals and small teams.
Generally speaking, Shanghai should shift from "giving space" to "giving systems, ecology, and connections" and transform its deep industrial base into real OPC ecological advantages.
Reporter from China News Service: Shanghai has a solid industrial foundation and abundant large-scale enterprises, universities, financial and computing resources. Why is it still trying to grab the OPC ticket? Can a model of institutional openness be formed in terms of cross-border compliance, tax services, overseas incubation, etc.?
Zhao Weixing: I believe that Shanghai’s industrial system has taken shape and industrial clusters are forming. Shanghai’s seizing of OPC opportunities is an inevitable trend in industrial transformation and upgrading. If large enterprises are compared to the "backbone root system" of economic development, then small and medium-sized enterprises, including OPC, are the "fibrous roots and fine veins". The two need to be opened up to form a "rainforest economy" in which large, small and medium-sized enterprises coexist.
Shanghai has the conditions to use OPC to create the smallest granular "institutional openness" sample, whose value far exceeds the industry itself. Shanghai needs to replenish the ecology and fill the gaps in the industrial chain segmentation, transforming the industrial system from "deep lakes and large waters" to "tropical rainforests"; it needs to be more energetic and turn talents from "organizational employees" into "independent elements" to release more value; it requires breakthroughs to create institutional innovation samples that can be replicated and promoted in the OPC field.
For Shanghai, the value of OPC is not “how many more market entities there are”, but rather leveraging the vitality of talents, complementing the industrial ecology, and making breakthroughs in institutional opening with the smallest incision. What we need to study is how to adapt existing talents, finance, computing power and professional services to adapt to this change. We can start from four types of issues: First, cross-border compliance. Shanghai can rely on existing open platforms and professional institutions to explore clearer and more convenient services to help operators understand the rules and processing paths. The second is tax services. Consolidated tax collection can be used as a direction to simplify tax processing. The third is overseas incubation and service contacts. Shanghai can explore establishing ties with overseas incubation institutions to provide support for entrepreneurs and facilitate overseas talents and projects to conduct business. The fourth is flexible employment guarantee. The needs of OPC practitioners in social security, medical insurance and pensions can be studied in conjunction with existing flexible employment policies.
Reporter from China News Service: Some people worry that OPC may cause individuals to bear more business risks while relying on large platforms to obtain tools and customers. How should it be viewed? How can cities respond?
Zhao Weixing: If OPC relies solely on traffic-based order-taking platforms to survive, and the platform controls pricing power and has no regulations, it is indeed possible that "individuals bear all business risks and the platform extracts most of the profits". However, the core value of AI-empowered OPC is the multiple amplification of individual capabilities. The value comes from technological empowerment rather than platform traffic arbitrage, which is essentially different from pure commission-based platforms.
At present, many cities are exploring institutional arrangements suitable for this type of business model, but it is difficult to say that there is a mature answer yet. The essence of OPC is the liberation of individual productivity in the AI era. The risk is not in the technology itself, but in whether the system can keep up. The governance logic must shift from "managing enterprises" to "serving individual entrepreneurs", and it is necessary to accelerate institutional innovation in taxation, social security, and ecological docking. (End)
Interviewee profile
Zhao Weixing, counselor of Shanghai Municipal Government.
