China’s total retail sales of consumer goods are projected to reach around 60 trillion yuan by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, according to a plan recently approved by the State Council. The plan was jointly formulated by multiple departments to continuously expand domestic demand and boost consumption.
Under the plan, the consumption rate will markedly increase, and consumption of goods and services across society will grow rapidly, further strengthening the role of consumption in driving economic growth. The plan also calls for optimizing the consumption structure, with a steady rise in the share of per capita service consumption expenditure, a larger digital consumption scale, and gradually narrowing consumption gaps between urban and rural areas, regions, and groups.
Officials from the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce answered questions about the plan. They highlighted three features: a focus on benefiting people by closely integrating livelihood improvement with consumption promotion in areas such as elderly care, childcare, culture, tourism, and health; a systematic approach that balances short-term and long-term, supply and demand, and other relationships; and an emphasis on innovation to cultivate new consumption growth points, including promoting service consumption, developing digital consumption, and advancing the debut economy.
The plan sets up nine special columns on the silver economy, childcare products and services, cultural and tourism consumption, health consumption, and automobile consumption, with concrete measures.
Twenty-eight key tasks are deployed across six areas: improving the quality and accessibility of service consumption, upgrading and expanding goods consumption, fostering new forms, models, and scenarios of consumption, enhancing consumption capacity, optimizing the consumption environment, and strengthening institutional mechanisms to promote consumption.
Looking ahead, China’s consumer market is entering a critical period of expansion and upgrading. Officials say the foundation is solid, upgrading trends are clear, and scenario innovation is vibrant, providing strong support for market growth.
The plan also calls for reviewing and removing unreasonable restrictive measures in consumption, establishing long-term mechanisms to boost household consumption, and better coordinating consumption policies with other economic and social policies to create a higher-level and more vibrant consumer market.