Market Regulation Administration: 16.194 million new individual businesses established nationwide in 2025

Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation released data showing that by 2025, there will be 16.194 million new individual businesses nationwide. Overall development remains steady, making positive contributions to boosting consumption, stabilizing employment, and serving people’s livelihoods.

Operational resilience continues to strengthen. The number of individual businesses established for more than three years reaches 84.198 million, accounting for 65.8% of the total, an increase of 9.7 percentage points since the end of 2020. The integration of online and offline development has led to a 14.7% year-on-year growth in individual businesses operating on online trading platforms.

Business formats are becoming newer and better. In 2025, 6.468 million new “new economy” individual businesses were established, bringing the total to 39.975 million, maintaining growth for five consecutive years. The number of newly established service industry individual businesses reached 14.625 million, with the top three fastest-growing sectors being “scientific research and technical services,” “education,” and “culture, sports, and entertainment.”

Operational quality is gradually improving. The cultivation of “famous, special, excellent, and new” individual businesses reached 184,000. The median duration of ongoing operations is 8.4 years. Nationwide, the number of “growth-type” and “development-type” individual businesses increased to 13.89 million, accounting for 17.3% of the total, while the proportion of “survival-type” businesses decreased. A total of 358,000 individual businesses have benefited from the “enterprise transformation” policy, which allows them to efficiently convert into companies through direct change procedures.

The State Administration for Market Regulation will carefully develop and implement the “14th Five-Year Plan” to promote the development of individual businesses. It will focus on precise classification and targeted support, strengthen the cultivation of “famous, special, excellent, and new” individual businesses, promote digital empowerment of platform enterprises, and work to stabilize expectations, invigorate vitality, and increase momentum for individual businesses.