On April 28, 2026, the State Internet Information Office released the Report on the Development of the Rule of Law on the Internet in China (2025) (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), which systematically reviewed China's institutional progress in cyberspace governance, platform economic supervision, and protection of the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment in the past year. The information disclosed in the report is dense and specific, from the establishment of national standards for food delivery platform service management, to the modification of civil case cause of action regulations, to the release of typical cases by judicial organs and the deployment of special supervision for public interest litigation. The scene of legislation, law enforcement, judiciary, and legal popularization working together is vividly portrayed on paper. Just two days ago, Xinhua News Agency was authorized to release the "Opinions on Strengthening the Service Management of New Employment Groups" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which clearly stated that "new employment groups are an important part of socialist workers", marking a new journey for China's protection of the rights and interests of new employment groups from fragmented exploration to systematic governance. The core dilemma facing the long-term protection of workers' rights and interests in the new form of employment lies in the insufficient institutional supply caused by the ambiguity of legal identity. Traditional labor law is based on the binary division of "labor relations civil relations", while the flexibility, autonomy, and technical attributes of platform employment in the new employment form are intertwined, leaving a large number of practitioners trapped in the gray area of "similar workers" and difficult to obtain sufficient protection. The confirmation of the "worker" attribute of the new employment group in the Opinion has cleared the obstacles for subsequent legislation, enabling the smooth projection of labor law concepts such as tilted protection and substantive fairness to this emerging field. The institutional progress outlined in the report clearly outlines the exploration trajectory of the system that had already been carried out before the issuance of the opinions. These practical accumulations are the foundation for the top-level design to be condensed and sublimated, including legislation, law enforcement, judiciary, and popularization of law. At the legislative level, soft law takes the lead in filling the gaps, and national standards and procedural rules take the lead, establishing a preliminary regulatory framework for ambiguous areas. Example one is the recommended national standard "Basic Requirements for Delivery Platform Service Management" released in June 2025. Although this standard is "recommended", it is often cited as an important reference in law enforcement and judicial practice to determine whether a platform is compliant, with significant "soft law" effectiveness. Its highlights lie in consolidating the platform's main responsibility, proposing specific requirements such as optimizing distribution rules, ensuring labor income, and reducing labor intensity. By incorporating "reducing labor intensity" into the basic requirements of service management, legislators have taken a crucial step from regulating labor hours to regulating labor intensity, which is of great significance for food delivery riders who prioritize "piece rate" and have fragmented work processes. This approach breaks the platform's defense logic of denying subordinate attributes and evading employer responsibilities based on "freedom to accept orders", and accumulates valuable experience for labor standard legislation. Example 2: The Decision of the Supreme People's Court on Amending the Provisions on the Causes of Civil Cases, issued in December 2025. The decision to add cases such as "employment disputes in new forms of employment" provides a relief portal for disputes that are still in a legislative gap and plays an important role in filling the legislative gap. The cause of action is not only a management tool, but also a gateway for the parties to identify the basis of their claims and seek judicial relief. Previously, such disputes could only be based on traditional causes of action such as "labor disputes" or "contract disputes". Even if they were not rejected due to difficulties in determining labor relations, the parties involved would find it difficult to obtain special protection under labor laws. The establishment of an independent cause of action has opened up an exclusive litigation channel for rights disputes that do not fully comply with labor relations, and has provided substantive rights with a procedural system. At the law enforcement level, regulatory tentacles extend to the core of algorithms, and rule review and precise services are gradually replacing traditional labor supervision to achieve source governance. The Report points out that the Supreme People's Procuratorate has carried out the "Public Interest Litigation Supervision Activity for the Protection of the Legitimate Rights and Interests of New Forms of Employment Workers", directly extending the tentacles of public power review into the "black box" of platform algorithms. In response to the strong feedback from workers on core rules such as assessment coefficients and reward and punishment mechanisms, the procuratorate has reviewed whether platform algorithms are unfair, increase labor intensity, and unreasonably withhold income, and urged the platform to rectify if they exist. This penetrating consumer rights supervision model advances the law enforcement logic from monitoring the surface compliance of labor relations to reviewing the rules governing the production organization of the platform, accumulating institutional experience for preventing the platform from using technological advantages to infringe on workers' rights from the source. Behind this also lies a shift in law enforcement philosophy - viewing new employment groups as service recipients in need of assistance, rather than just management targets. At the judicial level, a diversified judicial protection chain is gradually taking shape. The report points out that the Supreme People's Court has released typical cases of protecting the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment, and has unified the judgment standards for cases that have been reflected in the judicial practice of civil disputes related to new forms of employment in recent years. Among them, for typical practices of platforms such as "chain outsourcing" and workers being "self-employed" to evade employment responsibilities, the court clearly penetrates the appearance of the contract and determines the labor relationship based on the employment facts. Whoever is in charge of you and how they are in charge of you will be protected accordingly. For the daily management of attendance, dispatching, rewards and punishments implemented by the platform through algorithms, the court is no longer confused by superficial forms such as "settlement by order" and "flexible acceptance of orders", and directly looks at whether there is any dominant labor management behind it. In terms of occupational injury protection, the case also clearly states that after receiving occupational injury protection benefits, workers still have the right to request a third party to bear tort liability. The two remedies can be claimed in parallel and not offset each other. Through case accumulation and rule extraction, judicial practice has drawn a more detailed protection scale between existing labor laws and civil laws, providing clearer expectations for resolving employment disputes in new forms of employment, and to a considerable extent breaking the long-standing dilemma of labor relationship determination in practice. At the level of legal education, rights awareness takes precedence, and precise propaganda is gradually embedded in platform operation nodes, laying a ladder for workers to move from "not knowing where their rights are" to "having the ability to claim their rights". The report points out that the Zhejiang Department of Justice has produced a legal anime on "strictly regulating administrative inspections related to enterprises", conveying the signal of protecting the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises in accordance with the law, and focusing on the development of legal materials in areas such as online live streaming and online distribution; The management departments in Heilongjiang, Guangxi and other places have also conducted classified lectures to groups such as food delivery riders and online anchors on traffic safety, advertising compliance, personal information protection, etc. These legal contents actively respond to the era proposition of algorithmic governance, guiding workers to understand the basic bottom line that algorithmic rules should follow in addition to traditional rights such as salary, rest, and safety. Only when tens of millions of new forms of employment workers gradually establish a clear awareness of their rights, can the operation of the system receive widespread social support, and the norms on paper can truly be transformed into practical guarantees in the hands of workers. Finally, the Report and Opinions also pointed out the direction for the next step of strengthening the protection of the rights and interests of new business groups. In this direction, the transparency of the algorithm needs to be further improved. The current focus of public interest litigation is on post event supervision and rectification. In the future, it can be extended to the front-end to explore the establishment of algorithm filing and regular compliance review mechanisms, so that the core management rules of the platform are no longer just a "black box" that is passively opened after an incident. The flexible connection of social security should also be promoted synchronously, and the coverage and treatment level of occupational injury protection pilot projects need to be further expanded. "Not fully conforming to labor relations" should not be allowed to become a threshold for people to be excluded from the social security system. The accumulation of judicial experience cannot be stopped either. The scattered judgment rules in individual cases need to be timely integrated into a more systematic judicial interpretation, providing unified judicial guidance for courts in various regions. More importantly, the existing efforts scattered at various levels and systems should be connected and form a joint force under the guidance of the Opinion, and then achieve a new height of safeguarding the rights and interests of new employment groups from point to area. When the exploration of various levels and systems moves from scattered to collaborative, the value of the system will eventually settle into a perceptible sense of happiness and achievement for workers. (Outlook on the New Era) (Author: Tang Linyao, Associate Researcher at the Institute of Law, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Associate Professor at the Law School of the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)