Increased activity in the consumer market

In the first three quarters, China’s consumer market accelerated its recovery. Among them, the total retail sales of social consumer goods increased by 6.8% year-on-year, the retail sales of services increased by 18.9%, and the contribution rate of final consumption expenditure to economic growth was 83.2%.

Sheng Laiyun, deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that under the influence of a series of policies to promote consumption, China’s consumption, especially service consumption, showed a good trend of rebound and recovery.

The market is recovering well.

In order to promote the sustained recovery of the consumer market, since the beginning of this year, a series of policies and measures to promote consumption have been introduced from the central government to the local government, covering many fields such as automobiles and home furnishing.

"As the effect of the policy’ combination boxing’ continues to emerge, the consumption of residents has improved, especially the consumption of some bulk commodities has improved significantly." Zou Xianyu, deputy director of the Macro Department of the Economic Forecasting Department of the National Information Center, said that from the overall trend, the cumulative growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods in the first three quarters reached 6.8%, a significant increase of 6.1 percentage points over the same period of last year. In September, the total retail sales of social consumer goods increased by 5.5% year-on-year, 0.9 percentage points faster than last month, among which urban consumption accelerated by 1 percentage point in September, and the improvement trend of consumption growth momentum was further revealed.

The recovery growth of domestic demand has played an important role in the stabilization and recovery of China’s economy. In terms of classification, residents’ consumption expenditure has accelerated, service consumption such as catering and accommodation has grown rapidly, and consumption of bulk commodities such as automobiles has grown steadily, and the potential of the domestic big market is constantly being released.

Service consumption is a bright spot. Since the economic operation has returned to normal, the offline passenger flow has gradually picked up, driving the service consumption to recover quickly. The data shows that the year-on-year growth rate of service retail sales in the first three quarters was significantly higher than the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods. Xia Jiechang, vice president of the Institute of Finance and Economics of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that in the consumer market, the development potential of service consumption is the most worthy of attention. Service retail not only has the general function of retail circulation activities, but also shows important driving effects in supply upgrading, consumption expansion, industry innovation and social employment, and is expected to become the new engine of China’s economic growth in the future.

This year’s Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, whether it is the number of trips, tourism consumption or accommodation, catering income data, have maintained a strong growth momentum. "This shows that the market activity has increased and it also highlights the potential and vitality of market consumption." Sheng Laiyun said.

While offline passenger traffic gradually picked up, online retail also maintained rapid growth. In the first three quarters, the national online retail sales reached 10.8 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.6%, which was 4.8 percentage points higher than the growth rate of the total retail sales of social consumer goods, and the contribution rate of physical network zero to social zero growth reached 33.9%. Among them, new formats such as live e-commerce are developing strongly. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Commerce, in the first three quarters, 151 of the 170 national e-commerce demonstration bases established live broadcast bases, and the national live broadcast e-commerce sales reached 1.98 trillion yuan, up 60.6%, accounting for 18.3% of the online retail sales. The live broadcast e-commerce pulled the net to zero growth rate of 7.7 percentage points.

Consumption potential needs to be tapped

Although the consumer market continues to recover steadily, the internal and external environment facing steady growth is still severe and complicated, and the consumption potential needs to be further tapped.

Taking new energy vehicles as an example, the sales of new energy vehicles accounted for 29.8% of the total sales of new vehicles in the first three quarters, and the supporting charging infrastructure system was also continuously optimized. However, there are still some problems in rural areas, such as insufficient construction of public charging infrastructure, difficult installation and sharing of charging facilities in residential communities, and prominent contradiction between supply and demand in different periods, which restrict the release of consumption potential of new energy vehicles in rural areas. In the next step, we should effectively reduce the restrictions on the installation of charging piles in rural power grids, promote the popularization of rural charging facilities, and fill in the shortcomings of consumer infrastructure.

In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the digital empowerment of traditional business districts and further promote the continuous improvement of physical store operations. Zou Xianyu said that in the process of focusing on supporting the construction of digital commercial blocks, it is necessary to support new business layouts such as smart retail, cross-border retail and unmanned supermarkets.

"China’s consumption potential is relatively large, and its population size is relatively large. In addition, it is at a critical stage of upgrading its consumption structure. As the economy continues to recover, the overall consumption trend in China will be good." Sheng Laiyun said that in the fourth quarter, China’s consumption will continue to recover in the first three quarters.

"Starting from the overall strategic situation, the state attaches great importance to expanding domestic demand in steady growth, gives priority to restoring and expanding consumption, and has launched a series of policy’ combination boxing’ to promote consumption." Wei Wang, a second-level researcher at the Institute of Market Economy of the State Council Development Research Center, said.

At the same time, the overall employment situation has improved, and the income level has increased steadily, helping the consumption power to stabilize. In the first three quarters, the national per capita disposable income actually increased by 5.9%, 0.1 percentage point faster than that in the first half of the year, which laid a good foundation for the sustainable recovery and growth of consumption in the future.

"Although the current economy is in the process of wave recovery and tortuous progress, with the continuous repair of the balance sheets of enterprises and residents, consumption willingness and consumption power are expected to further recover, and consumption momentum will be further enhanced." Zou Xianyu said that at the same time, we should also see that there is still a distance from the complete recovery of consumption, and the fluctuation of consumption growth is still large. From the perspective of key categories, the gap-filling effect of service consumption will end, and the whole will gradually return to the normal growth trend, and commodity consumption will maintain a moderate growth.

Experts said that the current demand growth rate is still insufficient, and it is necessary to continuously enhance the confidence of enterprises and markets. At the same time, firmly grasp the key link of expanding domestic demand, accelerate the activation of the domestic market, and fully release the economic growth potential of China. (Reporter Feng Qiyu)