Stimulating the Greater Potential of Service Consumption and Doing a Good Job in Expanding Domestic Demand "Big Article"
2024-10-10
Service consumption is an important support for improving people's livelihood and well-being, an important direction for optimizing and upgrading consumption structure, and an important endogenous driving force for promoting high-quality economic development. The Party Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to service consumption and have designated this year as the "Year of Consumption Promotion". In August of this year, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High Quality Development of Service Consumption", which for the first time specifically made comprehensive and systematic deployment on the development of service consumption. It is an important guiding and guiding document for the high-quality development of service consumption in China in the coming period, marking an important evolution of China's macroeconomic regulation and control ideas. Service consumption is related to people's livelihood, happiness, and sense of achievement. With China's economy shifting from high-speed growth to high-quality development, social consumption is increasingly showing an upgrading trend towards personalization, diversification, and quality. The consumption pattern is also gradually shifting from mainly commodity consumption to emphasizing both commodity and service consumption. Service consumption plays an increasingly prominent role in expanding domestic demand and achieving high-quality development. Grasping the trend of consumption upgrading is related to the overall and long-term interests. In the new situation, China's service consumption presents a trend of digitalization of consumption supply, quality of consumption demand, and youthfulness of consumption subjects. The upgrading of consumption structure brings profound changes to social life, production methods, and business models. Grasping the trend of consumption upgrading is related to the overall and long-term interests of economic and social development. Firstly, service consumption is a strong driving force for economic transformation. Consumption is the foundation of growth and the main driving force of the economy. The "hotspots" of consumption are often the "focuses" of investment. Promoting consumption upgrading and unleashing consumption potential are major tasks of economic transformation. The expansion and improvement of service consumption will drive investment in the service sector, leading to a simultaneous increase in both quantity and quality of physical consumption. Service consumption represented by catering, accommodation, tourism, shopping, etc. can present a chain like mutual triggering relationship and also play a cluster like related driving effect, stimulating high-frequency and essential physical consumption demand. The upgrading of consumption structure will drive the high-end, intelligent, and green development of industries, promote the optimization and upgrading of investment structure, and form a virtuous cycle of new consumption leading new supply and new supply creating new demand, thereby promoting the transformation of economic development mode. Secondly, service consumption is an important driving force for promoting the domestic circulation. Combining the trends of new urbanization and aging population, focusing on the potential needs of the people that have not yet been met and need to be stimulated, and meeting diverse and high-quality consumption needs can help smooth the domestic circulation and improve the quality of international circulation. Enhancing residents' consumption capacity, stabilizing consumption expectations, and optimizing the consumption environment will help fully leverage the advantages of China's super large market, promote the transformation and upgrading of consumption structure, improve consumption levels, cultivate and strengthen new forms of consumption, and better facilitate the domestic circulation. At the same time, focusing on global market demand, accelerating the release of consumption potential in domestic and international markets through international economic and trade cooperation, and achieving mutual benefit and win-win results. Thirdly, service consumption is a key stable anchor for social employment. Service consumption has the characteristic of "contact" and is a typical labor-intensive industry, especially in lifestyle service industries such as catering and accommodation. The expansion of service consumption helps to absorb more labor employment, stabilize employment and increase income, thereby improving the distribution structure and promoting "derivative" consumption. As a result, the more active the consumption of life services, the more job opportunities are created, and the employment income is more sustainable and stable. The whole society will form a virtuous cycle of "stable employment - stable income - willing consumption". Service consumption, corresponding to physical consumption, targets intangible services and involves numerous industries. It includes traditional consumption such as catering and accommodation, home services, and elderly care, as well as improved consumption such as entertainment, tourism, and sports with greater growth potential, and new consumption such as digital, green, and health. Service consumption and physical consumption are not contradictory and substitutive relationships of 'one goes, one exists', but have an inherent relationship of dialectical unity and mutual promotion. Physical consumption is the material foundation of service consumption, and the improvement and expansion of service consumption will effectively promote physical consumption. Service consumption can directly drive growth and indirectly stimulate domestic demand to achieve a driving effect on economic growth. For example, the significant development of the health and wellness industry has driven the consumption of physical products such as nutritional supplements; The supply of high-quality nutritional supplements will also promote the prosperity of the health and wellness industry. Expanding and improving the quality of service consumption, coordinating and driving physical consumption, is conducive to forming a new situation of expanding domestic demand where service consumption and physical consumption develop together and promote each other. The change in demand, the change in structure, and the change in driving force. Currently, China is in an important stage of industrial structure transformation and consumption structure upgrading, with an increasing demand for specialized productive services and quality living services. From the perspective of the development trend of service consumption, there are three main positive factors: firstly, the people's yearning for a better life brings new demands for consumption upgrading. International experience shows that when per capita GDP exceeds 10000 US dollars, the process of consumption upgrading will significantly accelerate. At present, China's per capita GDP has exceeded 12000 US dollars, and people's yearning for a better life has become stronger. Consumer demand has changed from "having" to "excellent", from focusing on quantity to pursuing quality, from survival oriented consumption to development and enjoyment oriented consumption. New consumption such as "quality consumption", "self pleasing consumption", "green consumption" and "digital consumption" are increasingly leading the trend. Service consumption that provides emotional value and satisfaction, such as cultural tourism, sports, health and leisure, is more popular in the market. Secondly, demographic changes contain new drivers of service consumption. The urbanization rate of China's permanent population has reached 66.2%, and it is still in a period of rapid urbanization, which brings about consumer demand for elderly care, childcare, education and training, and residential services. Young people are gradually becoming the main consumers, preferring personalized, differentiated, and experiential consumption modes such as socializing and live streaming. Riding, skiing, camping, watching performances, and other youthful and immersive consumption experiences have become new highlights. From a population perspective, the aging society is accelerating, and the "silver haired economy" is entering a golden period of development. The demand for life services such as home care, health, and nursing is becoming more urgent. Service formats such as elderly meal assistance, home-based elderly care, and elderly travel are gradually becoming more diverse, nurturing a new "blue ocean" of service consumption. The replacement and preference changes of the main consumer groups have accelerated the upgrading of traditional consumption to new consumption, and service consumption must focus on the precise consumption needs of each group. Finally, technological innovation continues to create new supply of service consumption. The upgrading of consumption in our country intersects and deeply integrates with the digital economy. Digital technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and virtual reality empower traditional consumption, giving rise to digital health, digital education, and smart catering. Delivery, education, and medical service robots continue to iterate and upgrade, accelerating the release of new consumption potential. New formats such as e-sports, social e-commerce, and live streaming e-commerce are growing rapidly, and digitalization has a significant impact on reducing costs and improving efficiency for service industry merchants. Since the beginning of this year, China's consumer market has shown a stable and positive trend, with the scale of consumption continuing to expand, consumption vitality surging and strong, and a clear trend of improving consumption structure, supporting the sustained recovery and improvement of the economy. The role of the service industry as a "stabilizer" and "ballast" has become increasingly evident. The consumption of services such as catering, transportation, and cultural tourism is growing steadily. Holiday consumption is booming, and the summer tourism market is full of "heat" power. The "cool economy" is constantly cultivated, activating consumption hotspots such as night tours, summer vacations, parent-child tours, and study tours. The digital consumer user group is constantly rising. There is still a structural imbalance between the demand and supply of service consumption. Currently, the middle-income group in China has reached over 400 million, but there are still problems such as supply-demand mismatch and structural imbalance in service consumption. In terms of supply structure, quality, and level, there is a contradiction that the supply of middle and low-end products cannot meet the demand of middle and high-end products. One is the insufficient supply of high-quality services. Overall, the service supply is universal, popular, and homogeneous, and a high-quality, personalized, and diversified service supply system has not yet been formed. From the perspective of supply scale, the service industry is generally in short supply, especially with the trend of aging and declining birth rates, "one elderly and one young" has become a necessity. Industries closely related to the people, such as home services, elderly care, rehabilitation companionship, and childcare, generally suffer from personnel shortages, high barriers, and low supply levels. High level service consumption such as culture, art, entertainment, sports, etc. also face problems such as insufficient supply, lack of high-end talents, and the need to improve service quality. From the perspective of supply structure, the contradiction between supply and demand of high-end service products is prominent. The standardization, normalization, and branding of medical care, vocational education, psychological counseling, and other fields are insufficient, and customized and personalized services are not enough. Some consumers are flowing into the international market. Secondly, the service consumption environment needs to be optimized. The standards in the service consumption industry are not sound, lacking unified service standards and norms, which affects the stability, reliability, and brand building of service quality. New scenarios and formats are constantly emerging in the service industry, but industry standards and institutional construction are lagging behind, and there is a lack of national unified standards in terms of employment requirements, service content, business processes, and fee collection. The contradictions of uneven service quality, difficult protection of consumer rights, and lack of industry supervision and punishment mechanisms have become prominent. The infrastructure of the service consumption industry is relatively weak, and the incomplete platform construction has led to information barriers and increased transaction costs, especially for important information asymmetry such as the business ability and personal credit of employees in the fields of home economics, elderly care, and childcare. It is urgent to strengthen service consumption supervision, standardize honest and compliant operations, and optimize and improve the market environment. Thirdly, policy guidance and support urgently need to be strengthened. Service consumption has been regarded as non productive for a long time in the past, with many restrictions on industry market access, low guarantee of fair use of production factors, few supportive policies, and even some restrictive measures. The institutional mechanism for coordinated promotion by various government departments needs to be improved; The consumption gap between urban and rural areas and regions needs to be bridged, and it is urgent to cultivate and support leading enterprises to accelerate transformation and upgrading. In addition, consumer awareness and acceptance need to be improved, and consumer education should be guided to actively transform consumption concepts, update and popularize green consumption concepts, etc. In the coming period, we must grasp the direction of upgrading the consumption structure, closely focus on cultivating, integrating, and activating it, and work together at the supply, demand, and institutional levels to promote a high-level dynamic balance between service supply and demand, so that residents can "consume", "dare to consume", and "be willing to consume". One is to focus on "cultivation" and take multiple measures to stimulate consumer vitality. Effectively boosting service consumption relies more on the growth of residents' income and the improvement of income expectations. To continuously optimize the virtuous cycle mechanism of the entire chain of "employment income distribution consumption" and establish a system of stable and sustainable consumption growth; Increase residents' income through multiple channels, enhance the consumption ability of low - and middle-income groups, improve wage growth mechanisms, enhance salary incentive mechanisms, and improve the social security system; Improve income distribution and employment systems, increase regulatory efforts in taxation, social security, transfer payments, and optimize personal income tax and other systems; Innovate financial services and increase financial support for service consumption. Service consumption vouchers or subsidies can be issued in various regions. At the same time, we will implement a paid vacation system, explore flexible and staggered vacations, and allow people to have leisure time to spend. The second is to focus on "integration" and innovate development to improve the quality of supply. On the one hand, focusing on the service consumption demands of various groups, continuously optimizing and expanding service supply, and building a more mature consumer segmentation market; Promote the integration of commercial, entertainment, tourism, residential services and other business formats, relying on urban commercial districts, smart blocks, digital stores, etc., design more new scenarios such as online and offline integration, commercial, cultural and tourism integration, etc; Accelerate international and regional efforts
Edit：Sun Mingxia，Lv Lei Responsible editor：Liu Hanxu
Source：Economic Information Daily
Special statement: if the pictures and texts reproduced or quoted on this site infringe your legitimate rights and interests, please contact this site, and this site will correct and delete them in time. For copyright issues and website cooperation, please contact through outlook new era email：lwxsd@liaowanghn.com
Economy
Recommended Reading Change it 
Home
