Survey of Chinese Micro and Small Business Operators: About One-Third Have Used AI, Q4 Confidence Index Rebounds to 48.9

Recently, the academic seminar on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, themed "Upholding Subtlety and Practicing Earnestly, Gathering Strength to Shine," and the release conference for the 2026 third-quarter China Micro and Small Business Operators Survey Report were held at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Participating experts and scholars engaged in in-depth exchanges on topics including the operating conditions of micro and small business operators, market confidence, digital transformation, private economy development, industrial policy, financial opening, and innovation and entrepreneurship, aiming to deepen understanding of the development patterns of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises by combining survey data, theoretical research and practical experience, and to provide academic support and policy reference for promoting the high-quality development of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. At the conference, the "China Micro and Small Business Operators Survey 2026 Third Quarter Report and Fourth Quarter Confidence Index Report" was released. Zhang Xiaobo, Director of the Enterprise Big Data Research Center at Peking University and Chair Professor at the Guanghua School of Management, and Li Zhenhua, Dean of the Ant Group Research Institute, respectively interpreted the operating conditions of micro and small business operators, digital transformation trends, and future market confidence. Zhang Xiaobo pointed out that since the China Micro and Small Business Operators Survey project was launched in the third quarter of 2020, it has conducted surveys for 25 consecutive quarters, covering more than 270,000 micro and small business operators in total, and has formed a micro-survey database with continuity and comparability. According to survey data and related estimates, about 550 million people in China derive their income from sources related to micro and small business activities, and micro and small business operators are of great significance to employment and people's livelihoods. The survey shows that indicators such as profit margins, cash flow conditions, employment changes and business expectations of micro and small business operators are strongly correlated with indicators such as macroeconomic prosperity, consumption and employment. At the same time, artificial intelligence is becoming a new driving force for the digital transformation of micro and small business operators. The latest survey shows that about one-third of micro and small business operators have already used artificial intelligence in their business activities, mainly in areas such as operations management, marketing and product design. He suggested paying further attention to demand-side policies and enhancing the market demand and development confidence of micro and small business operators by improving residents' income and consumption capacity. Li Zhenhua released and interpreted the 2026 fourth-quarter China Micro and Small Business Operators Confidence Index online. The index measures expected changes of micro and small business operators for the next quarter from four dimensions: market demand, operating revenue, operating costs and employee scale, providing supplementary reference for observing microeconomic prosperity and macroeconomic trends. Data show that the 2026 fourth-quarter confidence index of micro and small business operators was 48.9, up 0.6 points from the previous quarter, but the overall foundation for recovery still needs to be consolidated. The survey shows that the net profit margin of micro and small 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 structural differences among different types of micro and small business operators, especially the practical difficulties of unregistered individual industrial and commercial households and operators in the consumer services sector, and that the foundation for recovery of the micro and small economy should be further consolidated by improving market demand and stabilizing business expectations. This conference featured two keynote reports, and 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 and former Vice Governor of Zhejiang Province, took the development practice of Zhejiang's private economy as his starting point and systematically summarized the experience of the growth and expansion of Zhejiang entrepreneurs since reform and opening up. He pointed out that the vitality of Zhejiang's private economy development mainly stems from six aspects: keeping closely abreast of the pulse of the times, encouraging mass entrepreneurship and innovation, promoting deep integration of science and technology with industry, actively expanding international markets, firmly adhering to long-termism, and fostering an open and inclusive innovation culture. At the same time, combining practices such as Zhejiang's "Hangzhou Six Little Dragons," cross-border e-commerce and the international development 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 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Professor Liu Qiao, former Dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University and Vice President of the China Capital Market Society, starting from the relationship between China's economic growth and the improvement of total factor productivity, re-examined the conditions and boundaries under which industrial policy plays a role. He proposed that future industrial policy needs to expand from the traditional perspective of production networks to an analytical framework of interaction between production networks and knowledge innovation networks. The effectiveness of industrial policy depends not only on investment scale and the selection of key industries, but also on the degree of fit between technological innovation and industrial innovation. In cultivating and developing new quality productive forces, industrial policy should pay more attention to diversified market entities, decentralized innovation exploration and industrial chain coordination. Professor Yin Desheng, Dean of the School of Economics and Management at East China Normal University, explored the relationship between capital account opening and the international development 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 capital allocation. At present, the free trade account is evolving from the early opening of specific businesses to more systematic institutional opening. He believes that in the future, restrictions on the use of accounts by qualified high-quality small and medium-sized enterprises should be further relaxed, the service targets should be shifted toward high-quality small and medium-sized enterprises, 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 small and medium-sized enterprises participating in international market competition. Professor Chen Zhao, Vice Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University, pointed out that future industries are characterized by technological routes that have not yet converged and highly uncertain market prospects, which means that the government faces challenges different from those of traditional industries when formulating industrial policy. For emerging fields at the technological frontier and in the incubation stage of industry, the role of market mechanisms and entrepreneurship should be fully brought into play, 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 small and medium-sized enterprises' participation in future industrial innovation. Preliminary research found that although future industry enterprises are generally relatively high in initial capital scale, small and medium-sized enterprises still account for a considerable proportion and play an important role in future industry-related patent applications and technological innovation. For this reason, attention should be paid to the innovation potential of small and medium-sized enterprises in future industries, and policy design should balance forward-looking planning with market selection. Professor Song Zheng, Head of the Department of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, shared empirical research on the impact of macroeconomic policy on enterprise expectations based on survey data on small and micro business operators in China. The research found that stronger macroeconomic policy signals can prompt business operators to pay greater attention to macroeconomic information when forming expectations and strengthen the link 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, pointed out that 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 China's reform and opening up, rich and unique practices of innovation and entrepreneurship have taken shape, and the existing entrepreneurial opportunity theory and value creation theory, which are mainly based on Western experience, are no longer sufficient to fully explain the internal connection between Chinese entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activity and national development. He emphasized that entrepreneurship research needs to go beyond mere economic value creation, incorporate multi-level wealth at the individual, organizational, social, national and ecological levels into a unified analytical framework, and focus on diverse forms such as technological entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, green entrepreneurship, cultural entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurship. At the same time, it is necessary to grasp the new entrepreneurial phenomena brought about by the development of artificial intelligence and the digital economy, promote the interdisciplinary integration of relevant disciplines, 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.