China News Service, Beijing, February 23: New consumption is accelerating, opening up new space for domestic demand in China

　　China News Service reporter Chen Su

　　At the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, China's consumption has "accelerated". Driven by new consumption such as service consumption, digital consumption, and green consumption, consumption potential has been further released, opening up new space for China's domestic demand.

Service consumption “takes the lead” in recovery

　　With the smooth transition of epidemic prevention and control and the implementation of consumption-promoting policies, China's consumption of catering, accommodation, cultural tourism and other services has shown a rapid recovery trend.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that China’s service retail sales will increase by 20% in 2023 compared with the previous year.

During the Spring Festival holiday that just passed, the cold weather could not stop the steaming enthusiasm for consumption and fireworks in urban and rural areas, and consumption of various services continued to explode.

On February 18, the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism released information. According to calculations by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Data Center, China had 474 million domestic tourism trips during the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, a year-on-year increase of 34.3%.

The picture shows tourists playing on the Bund in Shanghai on February 13.

Photo by China News Service reporter Yang Bo

　　During the Spring Festival, the Ministry of Commerce focused on monitoring the sales of catering companies, which increased by approximately 17% year-on-year.

According to calculations by the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there were 474 million domestic tourism trips across the country during the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, a year-on-year increase of 34.3%, and a year-on-year increase of 19.0% over the same period in 2019; domestic tourists spent a total of 632.687 billion yuan on travel, a year-on-year increase of 47.3% %, an increase of 7.7% compared with the same period in 2019 on a comparable basis.

　　In addition, the movie box office reached 8.016 billion yuan, setting a new record for the Spring Festival box office.

According to data from the People's Bank of China, online payment transactions processed by Wanglian Clearing Company and China UnionPay continued to grow across the industry. From New Year's Eve to the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, an average of 2.63 billion transactions were processed daily, and the national average daily transaction amount was 1.25 trillion yuan. Compared with During last year’s Spring Festival holiday, the daily average growth was 18.6% and 8.0% respectively.

　　Zhong Zhengsheng, chief economist of Ping An Securities, said that overall consumption will increase during the 2024 Spring Festival, with service consumption becoming the biggest highlight.

Among them, the recovery rate of tourism revenue is the highest among major holidays in China since 2020, reflecting the resilience of China's domestic demand.

Looking to the later period, the unit price per customer may be subject to residents’ spending power in the short term, and there is still considerable room for improvement in service consumption.

　　The “sudden emergence” of new consumption

　　In addition to service consumption, new consumption such as digital consumption, green consumption, and "national trend" consumption are also growing rapidly, becoming a new engine for expanding domestic demand.

　　In recent years, China's online consumption has continued to grow faster than offline consumption.

For the whole year of 2023, the national online retail sales of physical goods increased by 8.4% year-on-year, 1.2 percentage points higher than the total retail sales of consumer goods, accounting for 27.6% of the total retail sales of consumer goods.

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, during the New Year Festival from January 18 to February 6 this year, online retail sales were close to 800 billion yuan, an increase of 8.9% over the same period last year, achieving a "good start" for online consumption in 2024.

　　Meituan’s 2024 Spring Festival “eating, drinking and having fun” consumption insights show that the life service industry has achieved a “good start”, with average daily consumption during the Spring Festival holiday increasing by 36% year-on-year and over 155% compared with 2019.

Li Jiwei, vice president of Meituan Research Institute, said that during this year’s Spring Festival holiday, new consumption clusters and festivals created in various places have become increasingly effective in promoting consumption, with a large number of cross-industry linkage scenarios such as “catering +” and “culture and tourism +” emerging. , the platform’s online and offline marketing methods are constantly renovated, driving the consumer market to continue to heat up.

On February 11, the second day of the first lunar month in the Year of the Dragon, the Beijing Ditan Temple Fair kicked off. The temple fair was first held in 1985. Visiting the Ditan Temple Fair during the Spring Festival has become a custom that Beijing people have followed for many years.

Photo by China News Service reporter Tomita

　　This year’s Spring Festival holiday, wearing Hanfu to pay New Year greetings, go to lantern festivals, and watch lion dance performances is very popular among young people and has become a new trend.

Many scenic spots have created displays of intangible cultural heritage and folk customs, and ancient cities, ancient streets, temple fairs, and markets in many places in China are crowded with people.

Big data from multiple e-commerce platforms show that since January this year, the search volume for Hanfu has skyrocketed. Taobao and Tmall New Year Festival data show that the search volume for "New Chinese Hanfu" has surged 683% month-on-month.

Sports and health consumption also exploded during this Spring Festival, with sales of cycling equipment and ski equipment on some e-commerce platforms increasing by more than 50%.

　Consumption is expected to continue to recover

　　According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, China's total retail sales of consumer goods will reach 47.15 trillion yuan in 2023, an increase of 7.2% over the previous year. The final contribution of consumer spending to economic growth is 82.5%, driving GDP (gross domestic product) to grow by 4.3%. percentage points, the basic role of consumption has been further enhanced, and a consumption-led domestic demand development pattern has basically taken shape.

　　Experts believe that China has a very large market with a population of 1.4 billion and more than 400 million middle-income groups. In addition, the upgrading of consumption structure, the evolution of new urbanization process, the rapid development of new consumption such as service consumption, digital consumption, green consumption, and health consumption, as well as the government With pro-consumption policies, China's consumption is expected to continue to recover, further opening up space for domestic demand.

　　The Forecasting Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences predicts that China’s final consumption will continue to be the main driving force for economic growth in 2024.

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