As China continues to fight the coronavirus outbreak, telecommuting is no longer an option but a necessity for many people. Research by iiMedia found that since the Chinese Spring Festival, over 18 million companies have asked their employees to work from home. The number of telecommuters now exceeds 300 million.

There are a few other factors contributing to the boom. From the supply side, many tech giants had already invested in that area for years. Technologies including cloud computing, big data and AI have made teleworking more efficient. The internet infrastructure has also been optimized. From the demand side, the global supply chain has increased the need for remote collaboration. Emergencies such as the ongoing coronavirus epidemic have catalyzed demand as well.

China's teleworking sector is facing fierce competition. Tech giants including Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and ByteDance all offer their own comprehensive teleworking platforms.

Alibaba's DingTalk was the first on the market and already has 200 million users as of end of 2019. But surging demand after this Spring Festival stretched them to their capacity limits. Hugo Zhu, CTO of DingTalk told CGTN that they increased to 20,000 servers on February 3 to cope with flooding demand as many people resumed work after the Spring Festival. 

"We can support very large organizations with millions of members, also very large chat groups, with 10,000 people in one chat group. We also provide third party data encryption technology to secure customers' data," he said.

Meanwhile, some analysts raised have questions on the sustainability of the boom and how online platforms can replace real cubicles once China wins the battle against the epidemic. Hugo Zhu believes teleworking will only become more popular. "Because the bandwidth for mobile network will be expanded in the 5G era. Also mobile phones will have better technologies. Meanwhile Dingtalk's technology will make communication more efficient and collaboration more transparent."

In addition to the comprehensive telework service providers, there are many other companies focusing on the vertical market. There are five main sectors in that market: Video conferencing, document collaboration, cloud storage, task management, and team collaboration.

Chinese tech giant Tencent's, Tencent Docs is designed for online document collaboration. Yan Xiangqing, senior product director of Tencent Docs said in the face of coronavirus outbreak, the company has significantly improved its capacity to meet surging demand. "A single document can now collect as many as 100,000 people's information."

A residential unit in Guangzhou uses Tencent Docs to collect health information of local residents to prevent the coronavirus. By scanning a QR code, everyone can report his or her info through a mobile phone, which is more efficient and safer compared to traditional face-to-face surveys. It collected 15,000 people's information in just four days.

Tencent Docs also teamed with Tencent Meeting, a video-conferencing service offered by the same parent company, to make teleworking more efficient. To better communicate during a remote video-conference, users can present documents or slides to other participants. The actions will be synchronized on all screens.

Tencent is investing heavily in teleworking. Besides Tencent Docs and Tencent Meeting, it also offers a comprehensive telework platform WeChat Work, an enterprise version of China's most popular social media app, WeChat.

Gai Keke, an associated professor of Beijing Institute of Technology, said that in the past, China has lagged behind in teleworking. But with fast-developing 5G technology, China is very likely to become a leader in this area.

"We know one of the key advantages of 5G technology is that it offers faster networking speed. That means the video conference will become more user friendly, connection will become more stable and the number of devices connecting to the network will be increasing. So this change will lead to seamless workforce connectivity," the professor said.