About One-Third of Micro and Small Business Operators Have Used Artificial Intelligence, "China Micro and Small Business Operators Survey Q3 2026 Report" Released

This morning, the academic seminar on small, medium and micro enterprises themed "Upholding Subtlety with Earnest Action, Gathering Strength to Shine" and the release conference for the 2026 Third Quarter China Small and Micro Business Operators Survey Report were held at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Experts, scholars, industry guests, and faculty and student representatives from Peking University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Fudan University, East China Normal University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and other universities and related institutions participated in the discussions and exchanges. The conference focused on the practical challenges and emerging opportunities facing the development of small, medium and micro enterprises, and held in-depth exchanges on topics including the operating conditions of small and micro business operators, market confidence, digital transformation, private economy development, industrial policy, financial opening, and innovation and entrepreneurship. Professor Jin Yuying, Vice President of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, pointed out that small, medium and micro enterprises are an important force for promoting employment, improving people's livelihoods, and stimulating economic vitality, and that their development provides an important window for observing macroeconomic performance. At present, small and micro business operators are encountering development opportunities such as the application of artificial intelligence, expansion of online sales, and digital operations, which are highly beneficial for expanding market demand space and alleviating financing constraints and other issues. Against this background, continuing to conduct surveys of small and micro business operators and to study in depth the development issues of small, medium and micro enterprises has important theoretical value and practical significance. Feng Liang, President of MYbank, introduced the development history and practical explorations of MYbank in serving small and micro business operators. Since its establishment in 2015, MYbank has continued to deepen financial services for small and micro enterprises and for agriculture, rural areas and farmers, with its service targets gradually expanding from online e-commerce merchants to offline small shops, small and micro enterprises in industrial chains and supply chains, and groups in flexible employment. The number of small and micro customers served by MYbank is a leader in the industry, and it continues to enhance its inclusive financial service capabilities through digital technology and artificial intelligence. The conference officially released the "China Small and Micro Business Operators Survey 2026 Third Quarter Report and Fourth Quarter Confidence Index Report." Zhang Xiaobo, Director of the Enterprise Big Data Research Center at Peking University and Chair Professor at the Guanghua School of Management, introduced the background, survey methods, and main research findings of the China Small and Micro Business Operators Survey project. Since the project was launched in the third quarter of 2020, it has conducted surveys for 25 consecutive quarters, covering more than 270,000 small and micro business operators in total, and has formed a micro-survey database with continuity and comparability. Compared with traditional enterprise statistics, this survey not only covers incorporated enterprises and registered individual industrial and commercial households, but also includes a large number of unregistered individual business operators, and can therefore more comprehensively reflect the operating conditions of China's small and micro economy. Small and micro business operators are the "capillaries" of China's economic operations and an important "barometer" for perceiving macroeconomic changes. About 550 million people in China have income sources related to small and micro business activities, and small and micro business operators are of great significance to employment and people's livelihoods. Zhang Xiaobo pointed out that in recent years the pace of expansion of traditional online operations has slowed somewhat, and problems such as intensified platform competition and rising traffic costs have gradually emerged; at the same time, artificial intelligence is becoming a new driving force for the digital transformation of small and micro business operators. The latest survey shows that about one-third of small and micro business operators have already used artificial intelligence in their business activities, mainly in areas such as operations management, marketing, and product design. The spread of digital technology has also been accompanied by structural changes such as a rising share of female entrepreneurs, an increase in one-person companies, and a higher proportion of unregistered individual business operators. At present, the main factors constraining the development of small and micro business operators have gradually shifted from supply-side pressure to insufficient market demand. The survey shows that 45.6% of small and micro business operators have no external financing needs, and relying solely on tax and fee reductions and financing support makes it difficult to fully respond to their operational difficulties. He suggested paying further attention to demand-side policies and, by improving residents' incomes and consumption capacity, strengthening the market demand and development confidence of small and micro business operators. Li Zhenhua, Dean of the Ant Group Research Institute, interpreted the China Small and Micro Business Operators Confidence Index for the fourth quarter of 2026. The index measures small and micro business operators' expectations for changes in the next quarter from four dimensions—market demand, operating revenue, operating costs, and employee scale—and can provide a supplementary reference for observing microeconomic sentiment and macroeconomic trends. The small and micro business operators confidence index for the fourth quarter of 2026 was 48.9, up 0.6 points from the previous quarter, but still below the 50 boom-or-bust line, indicating that although operators' confidence has improved at the margin, the overall foundation for recovery still needs to be consolidated. There are obvious differences in the confidence recovery of different types of business entities, among which the confidence index for unregistered individual industrial and commercial households was 48.1, for registered individual industrial and commercial households 49.7, and for incorporated enterprises 50.9, reflecting that entities that are smaller in scale and have weaker operating foundations face certain pressure. By industry, confidence in sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture is relatively strong, while the consumer services sector still faces problems such as insufficient demand, intense competition, and rigid costs. The survey shows that the net profit margin of small and micro business operators rebounded from 3.4% in the previous quarter to 4.2%, but operational fragility and liquidity pressure still exist. Li Zhenhua emphasized that in the future more attention should be paid to the structural differences among different types of small and micro business operators, and especially to the practical difficulties of unregistered individual industrial and commercial households and operators in the consumer services sector, so as to further consolidate the foundation for the recovery of the small and micro economy by improving market demand and stabilizing business expectations. In the two keynote reports at this conference, six guests conducted in-depth discussions from perspectives including private economy development, industrial policy, cross-border finance, future industries, macroeconomic policy, and entrepreneurship theory. Sun Jingmiao, Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Government Advisory Committee, delivered a report titled "The Source of Vitality for Private Economy Development." Taking the development practice of Zhejiang's private economy as his entry point, he systematically summarized the experience of the growth and expansion of the Zhejiang merchant community since reform and opening up. Zhejiang's private economy has formed a sound pattern of coordinated development between large enterprises and small, medium and micro enterprises, and small, medium and micro enterprises have become an important force supporting economic growth, promoting employment, and driving innovation. The vitality of Zhejiang's private economy development mainly stems from six aspects: keeping closely attuned to the pulse of the times, encouraging mass entrepreneurship and innovation, promoting deep integration of technology and industry, actively expanding into international markets, firmly adhering to long-termism, and fostering an open and inclusive innovation culture. Enterprise innovation and entrepreneurship require not only entrepreneurial spirit but also the coordinated support of factors such as technology, industry, and finance. Drawing on practices such as Zhejiang's "Hangzhou Six Little Dragons," cross-border e-commerce, and the internationalization of private enterprises, he pointed out that continuously promoting the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, attracting and supporting young entrepreneurial talent, and building an institutional environment conducive to enterprise growth are important conditions for stimulating the vitality of private economy development. It is necessary to adhere to long-termism, promote an innovation culture that tolerates failure, accelerate the transformation of government department services toward empowering enterprises, and create a better environment for the innovative development of the vast number of small, medium and micro enterprises. Professor Liu Qiao, Vice President of the China Capital Market Institute, delivered a report titled "The Microfoundations of Industrial Policy." Since reform and opening up, the number of market entities in China has continued to increase, and input-output linkages between industries have continued to deepen, forming a denser production network. The enormous number of market entities and their extensive transactional linkages enable investment in key industries to generate stronger spillover effects through upstream and downstream connections, thereby driving improvement in overall economic efficiency. Future industrial policy needs to expand from the traditional perspective of production networks to an analytical framework of the interaction between production networks and knowledge innovation networks. The effectiveness of industrial policy depends not only on the scale of investment and the selection of key industries but also on the degree of fit between technological innovation and industrial innovation. He believes that, oriented toward cultivating new quality productive forces, industrial policy should avoid excessive focus on a small number of enterprises and projects, pay more attention to diversified market entities, decentralized innovation exploration, and industrial chain coordination, and promote a shift in policy support from pure capacity investment to innovation capacity building. The large number of vibrant small, medium and micro enterprises is an important microfoundation for industrial policy to generate broad economic effects. Professor Yin Desheng, Dean of the School of Economics and Management at East China Normal University, took "FT Account Expansion and Upgrading and SMEs Going Global" as his topic, exploring the relationship between capital account opening and the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises. He pointed out that the free trade account, as an important institutional innovation in China's financial opening, provides convenience for enterprises in cross-border settlement, financing, and fund allocation. With the expansion and functional upgrading of the FT account system in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone and the EF account system in the Hainan Free Trade Port, free trade accounts are evolving from the early opening of specific businesses toward more systematic institutional opening. He believes that free trade accounts still have considerable room for reform in supporting SMEs going global. In the future, restrictions on eligible high-quality SMEs' use of accounts should be further relaxed, the service targets should be shifted toward high-quality SMEs, coordinated development of offshore and onshore financial services should be promoted, and the free trade account network covering more pilot free trade zones should be gradually improved. At the same time, cross-border financing, exchange rate risk management, and full-chain financial services should be strengthened to provide more efficient financial opening services and support for SMEs participating in international market competition. Professor Chen Zhao, Vice Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University, delivered a report titled "Future Industries and SMEs." Future industries are characterized by technological routes that have not yet converged and highly uncertain market prospects, which confront the government with challenges different from those of traditional industries when formulating industrial policy. For emerging fields at the technological frontier and in the industrial incubation stage, the role of market mechanisms and entrepreneurial spirit should be fully leveraged, leaving room for exploration of different technological routes. Combining patent data, enterprise business registration information, and samples of specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative enterprises, he conducted an empirical analysis of SMEs' participation in future industry innovation. Preliminary research found that although future industry enterprises are generally relatively high in initial capital scale, SMEs still account for a considerable proportion and play an important role in future industry-related patent applications and technological innovation. Further analysis of the investment behavior of government-guided funds found that some micro and small enterprises formed future industry-related patent achievements after receiving fund investment, reflecting their potential innovation capacity. Professor Song Zheng, Head of the Department of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shared empirical research on the impact of macroeconomic stimulus policies on enterprise expectations based on survey data on Chinese micro and small business operators. The study found that after the release of relevant policy signals on September 26, 2024, micro and small business operators' expectations for future economic growth, market demand, and their own business conditions improved significantly. Further analysis shows that stronger macroeconomic policy signals can prompt operators to pay more attention to macroeconomic information when forming expectations and strengthen the connection between macroeconomic judgments and micro-level business judgments. This finding provides new empirical evidence for understanding how macroeconomic policy affects micro-level business entities through the expectation channel, and also shows that the consistency between the subsequent implementation of policy measures and policy signals is of great significance for maintaining policy effects and stabilizing market expectations. Professor Liu Zhiyang, Dean of the Institute for Chinese Modernization at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, delivered a report on "Building an Autonomous Knowledge System for Chinese Entrepreneurship." Entrepreneurial activity is not only an economic behavior at the enterprise level but also an important force driving economic growth, social development, and institutional innovation. Since reform and opening up, China has developed rich and unique innovation and entrepreneurship practices. The existing entrepreneurial opportunity theory and value creation theory, which are mainly based on Western experience, are not yet sufficient to fully explain the intrinsic connection between Chinese entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurial activity and national development. He believes that, grounded in the practice of Chinese modernization, efforts should be made to explore and build an autonomous knowledge system for Chinese entrepreneurship and, based on the "broadly defined wealth creation and sharing theory," to re-examine the wealth creation, wealth transformation, and wealth sharing functions of entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship research needs to go beyond purely economic value creation and incorporate multi-level wealth—individual, organizational, social, national, and ecological—into a unified analytical framework, paying attention to diverse forms such as technological entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, green entrepreneurship, cultural entrepreneurship, and institutional entrepreneurship. At the same time, it should grasp the new entrepreneurial phenomena brought about by the development of artificial intelligence and the digital economy, promote the interdisciplinary integration of entrepreneurship with economics, sociology, and public management, and better explain China's entrepreneurial practice and serve the needs of national development. This conference was jointly hosted by the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, the Center for Enterprise Big Data Research at Peking University, the Institute for Chinese Modernization at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and the School of Entrepreneurship at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and co-organized by Zhejiang MYbank Co., Ltd. and the Ant Group Research Institute.