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Zhang Yi, CGO of Zhonghe Group: HiWork—New Economy and New Connections Ensure Greater Support and Freedom

Hello, everyone! I’m Zhang Yi, co-founder and CGO of Zhonghe Group. I’m currently in charge of HiWork. Today, I will share my insights into new economy industries, particularly those regarding the underlying demands of practitioners involved in new economy.



I believe you are quite familiar with new economy industries, as they have already been merged into every aspect of our daily life. For instance, when you were going to catch your flight yesterday, you should first book a car via an online car-hailing platform to reach the airport. On the way to the airport, it might occur to you that tomorrow was a weekend, so you might book a cleaner online to clean your house. When the plane landed, you felt anxious because of poor cell phone reception for a long time, so you needed to watch some short videos or live streams to relax a bit. Then, after you checked in your hotel in the evening, you might order takeout.

You have two other options before going to bed: you may ask your kids to study or you may push yourself to study. That is to say, you may use an educational APP to find a suitable course for your kids, or you may visit Bilibili and open the homepage of a blogger to enrich your knowledge.

I could benefit from the above services and they really make me very happy. They are also our customers, as we provide reliable services for them.

In this context, we are not going to share the value of our customers with you. Their market value is already reflected in their social value. Services of the digital economy have been integrated into every detail of our everyday life.




Today, I want to reveal to you the challenges, pain points and demands of those working in the sector of the digital economy:

1) Delivery guys

Negative comments are very horrible. Still, rainy days are the worst nightmare for delivery guys. In theory, no one wants to go out if it is raining, so orders will surge. In addition, delivery fees will be higher in a rainy day and delivery guys will earn more money accordingly.

In spite of these advantages, they hate rainy days the most, because they are put at greater risk. Although they could receive more orders, they face more challenges as well. For example, takeout might get wet in the rain, or they may more easily fall to the ground riding a motorcycle in a rainy day. Besides, overtime pay is higher in a rainy day as well. Their income is directly influenced by a great variety of uncertainties. 

2) Drivers of online car-hailing platforms

They are most afraid of emotionally unstable passengers. I watched a saddening video on Douyin before I went on stage. A driver of an online car-hailing platform drove 40km to pick up a passenger and then waited for half an hour after reaching the destination. But the passenger canceled the order without telling him at the last minute. Why was that? It was because the driver did not get off the car and help the passenger with his baggage. The driver was very frustrated and tried very hard to explain to the passenger that he was not offering tailored taxi services but fast ride services. This case explains a lot of it. If a driver of the Didi platform receives a negative comment from a passenger for any reason, the number of orders allocated to him and his income will be affected.

3) Video game streamers

I’m quite familiar with this industry. Our company cooperates with all live streaming platforms in the market and top management companies. I myself have also taken this opportunity to interact and communicate with a lot of famous video game streamers in China.

As far as I’m concerned, the biggest challenge for video game streamers is to repress their emotions. Live streaming can be fairly exhausting, as it may last four to eight hours, or even longer. Video game streamers are basically talking to themselves in front of the screen. They also have to block out the comments of anti-fans. Many people let their negative emotions out on live streaming platforms, but these streamers are not allowed to speak back. A lot of streamers I know are struggling against huge psychological pressure and overwhelming anxiety. The more famous they are, the more stressed they are. For this reason, it is not that easy for them to make money. They are emotionally insecure.

4) Online teachers

Teachers giving online courses are also an important group. As we all know, it is a very good transitional career choice for students graduating from famous universities to start their professional life by giving courses online. Online education platforms prefer teachers trained by Project 985, especially Tsinghua University and Peking University. These teachers may have a fleeting sense of achievement, but they would feel at a loss later on. They repeatedly use basic knowledge and are concerned about how to make themselves popular with kids.

5) Cleaners

A friend of mine told me “if one stops working, his source of income vanishes as well”. If a cleaner fell ill and thus stopped working, then his source of income would vanish as well. The cleaner would face financial distress, because he is the breadwinner of his family.




I recognize the demands and pain points of more people underpinning the desirable services made available to you.

Here are four demands proposed by new economy practitioners based on a sense of security

First, they expect to gain stable income.

Second, they expect timely wage settlement.

Third, they expect protection against unexpected incidents. 

Fourth, they expect to find sustainable jobs.

We define the first two as explicit security demands. Once you begin working in the industry, you could compare this month’s income with the previous month’s income and the price difference between this order and the previous one. In general, salary in new economy industries is paid per diem. In addition, in order to provide better user experience, these industries offer product functions per diem without limits on usage frequency. For our services, salary is paid automatically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The last two are protection against unexpected incidents and sustainable jobs. I think a stable income results from the comparison between expectations and aftersales. This is determined by platforms which could handle problems related to traffic. Employees need platforms to access enormous traffic and they could acquire skills through the operation rules of platforms. Essentially, timely settlement of salary means they could get paid per order and then withdraw their money per diem.




These workers feel dissatisfied or decide to quit altogether, once their explicit demands are not met. In comparison, unmet implicit demands will generate anxiety. For instance, popular streamers are concerned that they may not be popular anymore one day. These four implicit and explicit demands also speak for the underlying demands of these workers.




Now, let’s look at the challenges confronting the scenarios of the new economy:

1) Live streaming: Live streaming is time-consuming. Streamers get paid per diem, but it is not a stable job. The risk of running into unexpected incidents is low and the job is highly unsustainable. The professional life cycle of streamers is extremely short. You never know when you will be doomed simply because of a single remark. They feel highly insecure.

2) Mobility: Relative fluctuations are associated with holidays and festivals. As to timely salary payment, mobility platforms used to pay drivers on a weekly basis in the past, but it is not a desirable salary payment mode for drivers because they have to pay for fuel cost first. Therefore, they work hard to upgrade themselves, so as to enjoy salary payment per diem. In this way, the frequency of salary payment has become an incentive.

3) Takeout: The income of delivery guys is relatively stable. It is proportional to the amount of time he spends on his job. Delivery guys are paid per diem or per month. They face the highest risk. Commercial insurance is a must for the takeout sector. Settlement across the sector is supplemented by commercial insurance. There are different combination schemes in different sectors of new economic services, because they face different scenarios and challenges.




Among「stable income, timely wage settlement, protection against unexpected incidents and sustainable jobs」, I think stable income is indisputably the responsibility of platforms, because they could control traffic and rules. As to the last three matters, the industry assigns them to fourth-party comprehensive service platforms. HiWork is one of the platforms. We help platforms pay their employees in a timely manner, manage settlement contracts and file personal income tax returns. We also provide freelancers with commercial insurance which includes scene-based insurance. For example, the insurance for takeout is based on orders. Besides, we regard sustainable jobs as an important project.




According to Sullivan’s data, “The development trend of freelancers in China from 2015 to 2025 suggests that there were seven million freelancers, but the figure would rise to 66.5 million by 2021,” growing by nearly ten times. It not only indicates the rapid expansion of employees involved in the new economy, but also drives the swift development of our company.




For us, although we establish partnerships with platforms, our service is targeted at new economy practitioners, which is the essence of such industries. Digital economic platforms work to boost production efficiency and help these employees to find matching jobs and improve skills faster. With our assistance, platforms could support employees and enhance their sense of happiness. This is what we seek to achieve through collaboration with new economic platforms.




「New economy and new connections」is the slogan of HiWork. We provide a management system of information flows and capital flows that brings the resources of enterprises, individuals and the public together.

Our operations are much more complicated than SaaS in a general sense. Most SaaS only oversees personnel and enterprises, and they would not engage with complicated third parties like banks and various government systems. Payment might seem to be an easy thing for many of you. The fact is, however, you may find it easy because Alipay and WeCom invested a lot of human resources and materials into personal payment. Today enterprise payment remains an annoying pain point, which is especially true for high-frequency payment. There are very few enterprises and scenarios of high-frequency demand regarding enterprise services.




These are three of our systems. Dr. Fang Liu, CTO of our company will elaborate on them, including our SaaS and open platforms and business management. This is a robotic process automation (RPA)+artificial intelligence (AI) robot that is connected to various banks and government systems.

Today, I also want to share the achievements of HiWork with you. Up to now, we have provided services for 27 million employees involved in the new economy and more than 10 percent of them come from destitute areas. This data is not just our achievement, but also reflects our requirements and pursuit of our mission and responsibility. Income is never our supreme goal. Instead, committed to our mission, we strive to serve and protect a number of customers and boost their sense of happiness as our annual management goal. This brings us back to the mission of the group, that is to “make every job secured.”




Apart from helping enterprises and freelancers, we have also worked extensively with the government on multiple fronts. For instance, we established the first digital service base in Hainan Province together with Hainan Free Trade Port Resort Software Community (RSC). The base was included in the sixth batch of smart innovation cases of Hainan Province. I want to express our appreciation to the RSC for your strong support to our business. We are also confident in delivering high-quality services in concert with the RSC, so as to serve more freelancers.

Next, we are going to provide more services for our close partners. For instance, we will outsource operation services to platforms, provide underlying services like video editing for them and launch more projects of intangible cultural heritage inheritance at our base in Hainan. In addition, we will also cooperate with local governments of Chongqing, Fujian and Ningxia to develop digital industries for different sectors.




We are not only serving new economy practitioners, but also helping vulnerable groups resolve challenges relating to income through technical means. The name of our public service brand 51 Tonglu means “we work together out of love along the way.” The social issue of helping vulnerable groups has always been one of our top priorities.

Finally, both HiWork and 51 Tonglu hope to make science and technology warmer and embrace a sustainable future.

This brings me to the end of my speech. Thank you!