Twenty Measures to Promote Consumption: A Package of Policies to Help Expand Domestic Demand Consumption | Policy | Domestic Demand
Beijing, August 1st (Xinhua) - The Economic Reference Daily published an article on August 1st titled "Twenty Measures to Promote Consumption: A Package of Policies to Help Expand Domestic Demand". The article stated that on July 31st, the reporter learned that the "Measures for Restoring and Expanding Consumption" was recently released, proposing 20 policy measures around six aspects: stabilizing bulk consumption, expanding service consumption, promoting rural consumption, expanding new consumption, improving consumption facilities, and optimizing the consumption environment. The Measures, together with the recently released key policies for promoting consumption in various fields and categories, form a comprehensive policy system to promote consumption and expand domestic demand. At the routine policy briefing of the State Council held on the same day, multiple ministries and commissions including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology further clarified the next direction of progress.
Make efforts on the supply side to enhance consumer willingness
Li Chunlin, Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that in the first half of the year, the overall domestic consumer market was in the process of recovery. Offline scenes such as catering, cultural tourism, and cinemas quickly recovered, shopping malls and commercial streets became lively again, and sports events, concerts, and other activities also resumed one after another, often making it difficult to obtain a single ticket. "However, the growth momentum of some consumer categories is still unstable, some residents' consumption confidence is not strong, and there are many concerns. In some areas, the consumption experience is not good, and the feeling is not good. Further policy efforts are needed."
Li Chunlin stated that promoting consumption policies is not about "emptying the wallet" or "overdrawing demand". On the contrary, the starting point of promoting consumption policies is to help residents save expenses, buy high-quality and affordable goods, buy new products and services with more technological content and more in line with their needs, and avoid illegal "tricks", counterfeit and inferior products. The government's policies are more effective and beneficial to the people, and the consumption and welfare of the people can be simultaneously improved.
This requires further efforts on the supply side to enrich high-quality products and services to meet consumer demand. In response, the Measures propose to organically combine the implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand with deepening the supply side structural reform, enhance the adaptability and flexibility of the supply structure to changes in demand, expand new consumption spaces, create new consumption scenarios, enrich consumption experiences, and lead and create new market demands with high-quality supply.
"If there is no supply side reform, the products produced will not be suitable for the market, and the people will not pay." Li Chunlin said that through supply side structural reform, we need to adapt to changes in demand and create new demand.
Among them, regarding the automotive consumption segment market, Li Chunlin stated that he will study and optimize more popular and inclusive support policies to better meet the multi-level and diversified consumption needs of the people, and promote the high-quality development of related industries.
Regarding the field of household appliances, He Yaqiong, Director of the Consumer Products Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced that the next step will be to focus on more, better, and more specific products, as well as more and more large-scale product conversions. At the same time, we will continue to carry out the "three product" action of increasing variety, improving quality, and creating brands in consumer electronics, accelerate the "global debut" of innovative products, support the high-end development of enterprises, and create well-known brands. We will also promote the direction of health, energy conservation, and greening, so that the people can use more high-quality, cost-effective, and high-quality products.
Strengthen supervision and optimize the consumption environment
While increasing efforts on the supply side, the Measures focus on addressing the issues of poor consumer experience and perception in certain areas, proposing targeted measures to optimize the consumption environment and encourage residents to "dare to consume". The Measures propose to comprehensively carry out the action of trustworthy consumption, improve service standards in key service consumption areas, crack down on counterfeit and inferior behaviors in accordance with the law, accelerate the formation of a closed-loop trustworthy consumption system that includes returns and exchanges, quality traceability, clear pricing, supervision, and evaluation.
Kuang Xu, Director of the Law Enforcement and Inspection Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said that in order to strengthen the foundation of the consumer environment system, relevant departments have formulated and revised a series of rules and regulations, such as the "Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Transactions" and the "Regulations on Clear Pricing and Prohibition of Price Fraud". Focusing on new business models such as blind box operation, duty-free online shopping, and new energy vehicles, we will introduce standardized guidelines, provide administrative guidance, implement defective product recalls, and guide the improvement of after-sales services in emerging fields such as home appliances, automobiles, duty-free, blind boxes, and e-commerce.
At the same time, we will continue to strengthen supervision and law enforcement, and the market supervision department will launch an "iron fist" campaign to crack down on issues strongly reflected by the public, such as illegal addition of food, counterfeit and inferior products, advertisements for "miracle doctors and medicines," and medical beauty chaos. Since the beginning of this year, more than 350000 cases in the field of people's livelihood have been investigated and handled. We have launched a comprehensive campaign to ensure safe consumption, continuously promoting offline no reason returns, local shopping returns from other places, and advance payment for rapid returns. Approximately 5.38 billion yuan has been returned from 654000 physical stores nationwide. Improve the online dispute resolution mechanism of the national 12315 platform, promote 132000 enterprises to settle on the platform, and facilitate the direct resolution of 16.5% of consumer disputes at the source.
Next, in order to improve the long-term mechanism of consumption, relevant departments such as the State Administration for Market Regulation will also issue opinions on improving the consumption environment, launch the creation of a national demonstration city for trustworthy consumption, and leverage the overall role of urban creation to further improve and upgrade the consumption environment in various regions.
Expanding employment, promoting income growth, and enhancing consumption capacity
The Measures also propose to optimize the mechanism for promoting a virtuous cycle of employment, income distribution, and consumption throughout the entire chain, and enhance consumption capacity.
Li Chunlin stated that the next step will be to focus on key areas, implement precise policies, stimulate vitality, implement employment priority policies, strengthen employment assistance for disadvantaged groups, adhere to the principle of more work, encourage hard work to become rich, and promote more low-income groups to enter the middle-income category. We will improve the policy system of factor allocation, increase factor income for middle and low-income people through multiple channels, increase property income for urban and rural residents through multiple channels, promote basic synchronization between income growth and economic growth, and improve consumer capacity to enhance consumer willingness.
In the view of Dong Ximiao, Chief Researcher of Zhaolian, consumption is sluggish and sluggish, especially due to the decline in consumer willingness and ability of residents. In the short term, the main reasons are that some enterprises were unable to operate normally under the impact of the epidemic in the early stage, and residents' work and income were unstable and uncertain, leading to an increase in uncertain factors and a decrease in consumer willingness. From a long-term perspective, it is related to the need for improvement in the social security system. In recent years, China's education, healthcare, and elderly care systems have undergone significant reforms. Despite the difficulty in fully covering the social security system, residents have increased their expectations of future income and expenditure uncertainty, leading to a significant increase in their awareness of prevention and willingness to save, thereby suppressing their further expansion of consumption.
"The key is to stabilize residents' expectations and confidence, further boost their willingness and ability to consume." Dong Ximiao said that the "Measures" propose targeted measures in multiple aspects, which will effectively promote and promote the release of consumption potential and structural upgrading, and help the continuous improvement of economic operation.
