Digital consumption prioritized as growth driver

China has unveiled an array of policies to drive digital consumption, which is now widely seen by policymakers and analysts as a critical force to unlock domestic demand and facilitate the country's transition toward a consumption-led growth model.

The synergies of the digital economy and consumption upgrade will continue to drive the evolution of the supersized Chinese market, fostering a more efficient and personalized consumption ecosystem that caters to the diverse needs of the country's consumers, they added.

According to a document released on Wednesday by the Ministry of Commerce and seven other government departments, China will expand the supply of diversified digital consumption, innovate and enrich digital consumption scenarios, and promote a higher-level dynamic balance between digital supply and demand.

Digital consumption is the act of using digital technology to access and interact with digital products, services and content, encompassing everything from online shopping and social media engagement to streaming media and the use of mobile apps.

"The core strength of this digital framework lies in its dual ability to create and connect," said Zhu Keli, founding director of the China Institute of New Economy.

It generates entirely new consumption scenarios, from livestreamed agricultural commodity sales that connect farmers directly to urban households, to augmented reality apps that allow users to visualize furnishing in their homes before making final purchases, Zhu said, adding that simultaneously, it acts as a highly efficient matching engine, using data analytics to align production with the nuanced, fast-changing preferences of hundreds of millions of consumers.

The government is taking proactive measures to encourage enterprises to enhance quality supply and release the consumption potential of products such as AI-powered smartphones, computers, smart robots, wearable devices and desktop 3D printing equipment, according to the document.

The country will also accelerate the integration and connectivity of smart home appliances, smart security systems and remote healthcare, as well as promote the pilot testing of intelligent and connected vehicles, it said.

In July, the added value of the large-scale digital product manufacturing sector grew 8.4 percent year-on-year, said Fu Linghui, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, at a news conference in mid-August.

"The rapid development of artificial intelligence has led to deeper integration with the real economy, with an ever-expanding range of application scenarios and the increasing prevalence of various smart terminal products," Fu said.

The document also laid out specific measures to develop smart retail and support the comprehensive digitalization of traditional brick-and-mortar commercial enterprises in terms of marketing, sales channels and business processes.

Meanwhile, it is also encouraging the healthy development of new retail formats, such as instant retail, social commerce and livestreaming e-commerce.

The NBS said online retail sales climbed 9.6 percent year-on-year from January to August. More significantly, the growth rate picked up by 0.4 percentage point from the January-July stretch, hitting a new high for the year.

Instant retail, which delivers everything from groceries to electronics in less than an hour — as well as livestreamed e-commerce — both continued double-digit growth trajectories, the bureau said.

The Chinese consumer is not retrenching but rather redirecting expenditure. The digital marketplace, with its ever-increasing efficiency and innovation, is successfully unlocking latent demand, said Zhang Jianping, deputy director of the academic committee at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing.

Unleashing the full potential of digital consumption requires a comprehensive support system, including logistics, financial services and an efficient, convenient and intelligent payment infrastructure, Zhang said.

"These support systems are crucial for the development and prosperity of digital consumption, and they must be effectively synchronized with the construction of digital platforms to support the growth of digital consumption," Zhang added.

To this end, the document has placed high premium on the development of smart logistics infrastructure, drone-based transportation services and intelligent e-lockers, as well as the interconnectivity between bank card clearing institutions and international payment platforms, and the expansion of the acceptance coverage and application scenarios of the digital yuan.