China announces specific measures to increase consumption

Town Online 2021: 03: 26.15: 31

Tourists shop at a duty-free shopping mall in Sanya, south China’s Hainan Province, on March 12, 2020. [Foto / Xinhua]

Beijing, 03/26/2021 (People Online) – China announced on Thursday 24 specific measures to stimulate new types of consumption, including accelerated construction of “new infrastructure” and pilot programs for the launch of digital currencies, as part of ongoing efforts to boost domestic demand and encourage the development of high quality.

Experts said the new measures are aimed at increasing demand-side measures and increasing consumption to better unleash pent-up consumer demand, promote innovation-driven development and inject new momentum into the economy.

The country unveiled 24 measures to continue cultivating new types of consumption and promote consumption growth both online and offline, according to a document jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission and 27 other departments.

According to the document, the measures will help meet the daily needs of residents, fully stimulate consumption and foster a complete system of internal demand, which is of great importance in building the new dual circulation development pattern.

New measures include fostering new types of retail businesses, actively developing an internet-driven healthcare sector, boosting the development of digital culture and tourism, intensifying the construction of new types of information infrastructure, the construction of an integrated national system of large data centers, the intensification of the development of 5G networks and 1000M fiber optic networks, and the development of smart cities and smart vehicles in the network.

More efforts will also be made to help companies improve the development capabilities of smart homes, wearable and smart mobile devices, stimulate the development of the internet in vehicles, establish more electric vehicle charging stations and launch pilot programs. of digital currency in some cities.

Citing the 2021 Government Labor Report, Bai Wenxi, chief economist at IPG China, said the government has set some key tasks this year, including stabilizing and expanding consumption and ensuring that people have the capacity and the will to spend.

“To further expand consumption, we need to make a great effort to increase people’s income,” Bai said. “We need to follow the trend of up-dating consumption to drive the development of internet-enabled forms of consumption, which will diversify offerings, better meet changing consumer demand, and foster new growth engines for fluid internal circulation.”

After years of development, consumption has become a key growth engine for China. Last year, consumer spending accounted for 54.3% of the country’s GDP, the highest in recent years, and remained one of the main driving forces behind economic growth for the seventh consecutive year, according to official data.

Fu Yifu, Senior Researcher at the Suning Institute of Finance, said that while the online consumer market was severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, new online business growth opportunities emerged in fields such as streaming. live in e-commerce, online education, telecommuting, and online health services.

“The new business added new impetus for the further development of China’s consumer market,” Fu said. “I believe that consumption will recover even more this year. On the demand side, the economic recovery has led to a rebound in revenue growth and has boosted consumer confidence and future market prospects. On the side Supply, new types of consumption, and government efforts to boost demand will further stimulate the nation’s economic growth.

“It is predictable that new types of consumption will be an anchor to drive consumption growth.”

China’s economy is expected to see a big rebound this year, with consumption at the center of the economic recovery, according to a report by the Forecast Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. China’s GDP growth rate is expected to grow 8.5% this year, while the consumption growth rate will be between 10.7% and 11.7%, he said.

(Web editor: Wu Sixuan, Zhao Jian)

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