'Tongkers' seek out solutions

Li Jun, 35, is not happy with the many advertisements he sees on WeChat Moments, a module of a popular social network on which friends share their personal moments.

The formerly clean platform has become a showplace for advertisements, products and shopping malls according to Li, who served in the army in remote Tibet for 13 years.

Latest figures from WeChat's holding company Tencent show the mobile phone application had 760 million active users around the world in April.

"This turns WeChat Moments into a very distracting and noisy place," said Li, who is now a civil servant for the administration for industry and commerce in Yubei district, Chongqing municipality.

Li is also concerned that advertisements on WeChat Moments are sometimes misleading or even dishonestabout the quality, as the network is difficult to regulate.

"I'm very annoyed," he said.

"I want a solution that can help me clear commercial information I don't need and I want technical measures in place to monitor and follow sales actions on WeChat Moments. This is beneficial for consumers to defend their rights."

Li is not merely complaining but is a "tongker", or problem shooter, who spoke out about the problem on Sunday with nine others concerned about other common problems to hundreds of listeners in Guiyang to compete for a top prize.

The tongker competition, a part of the Guiyang Big Data Expo, aimed to screen general problems of the public and seek business opportunities by solving those problems.

The Guiyang city government began to solicit public problems and solutions in March. By early April, 22,185 people had registered to participate in the contest and submitted 2,700 proposals.

Winners of the tongker competition shared 1 million yuan ($151,645) in prizes and their proposals will receive government subsidies and venture capital investment.

Ten tongkers including Li took to the stage on Sunday to present their proposals for final evaluation. The show is a program under the 2016 Guiyang Big Data Expo.

Gao Weidong, deputy mayor of Guiyang, said many problems in governance have been raised with possible solutions, which are good models of "collaborative social governance".

"I hope tongkers can be new drivers of our economic innovation," he said.

Zhou Tao, a professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China said many people who start businesses do not understand the demands behind problems in the field, and therefore may not solve fundamental issues.

"Many innovation are like water without a source if we don't have a tongker platform collecting and screening problems and solutions."

Zhang Xiang, executive president of Caixin Media, said the tongker platform would "promote a relatively fair redistribution of resources, solve problems relating to people's livelihood and build a more harmonious society".

According to the organizers of the event, a tongker's platform will be established after the contest, helping link tongkers, makers and investors for opening new businesses based on tongkers' ideas and solutions.

(China Daily 05/31/2016 page15)