By Qi Yunlan, DRC

2018-1-24

In 2017, the economy maintained a stable performance beyond expectations. Boosted by new drivers, China’s economy, with unleashed vitality and potential, had gained the momentum for a smooth, coordinated and sustainable growth. As a result, the confidence of the consumers edged up, the domestic market demand was increased and the consumer structure was initially upgraded. Final consumption remained the strongest engine of economic growth and was strongly driven by the newly-emerged spending mode in 2017. Last year, the Chinese consumer confidence index in the first eleven months went up to 115.0, in which the indexes exceeded 120 in October and November as the first and second highest respectively in the past record. The total retail sales of consumer goods stood at 36626.2 billion yuan, up 10.2% year on year with an actual increase of 7.8%, contributing to more than 60% of economic growth. In 2018, the global economy will embrace a bright prospect of recovery, and China’s economy will continue to pursue a high-quality growth and maintain a stable performance while pursuing progress across the board. The domestic economic structure will be upgraded steadily and generate remarkably improved quality and efficient growth. Propelled by multiple drivers boosting the consumption growth, the domestic consumer market demand will grow steadily with remarkably upgraded and high-level consumer structure. It should be noted that service consumption will take the lion’s share in total consumption shored up by newly-emerged spending modes and hotspots of consumption. Due to the narrowing gap between rural and urban areas, final consumption will still boast the main engine of economic growth in 2018. Given the new developmental trends of the consumer market, the government needs to deepen the supply-side structural reform of the consumer market, accelerate the innovation of the institutional mechanism and improve the level and quality of market supply, in a bid to unleash the potential of consumption, provide new engines for the sustainable and sound social and economic development in the new era and meet the needs of rural-urban residents for a better life.