Shopping gala focuses on quality growth, AI dividends

Boosting consumption

This year's Government Work Report listed vigorously boosting consumption and expanding domestic demand across the board as key priorities for 2025.

"Consumption has become the main driving force boosting China's economic growth, and the Singles Day shopping extravaganza is pivotal to stimulating people's purchasing appetites, bolstering domestic demand and promoting consumption recovery," said Wang Yun, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research.

China's retail sales, a significant indicator of consumption strength, went up 4.5 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of this year, said the National Bureau of Statistics. Online sales remained a bright spot, climbing 9.8 percent year-on-year during the January-September period.

Pan Helin, a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy, said that to further vitalize the consumer market and shore up economic growth, more stimulus policies are needed to increase household incomes, stabilize and expand employment, and nurture diversified purchasing scenarios and new types of consumption.

The country has announced a raft of measures to expand the scope of the consumer goods trade-in program, increasing funding from 150 billion yuan last year to 300 billion yuan through ultra-long-term special treasury bonds, and offering subsidies for more home appliances and electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets and smartwatches.

Zhang Yunfang, 33, a white-collar worker in Beijing, bought a new refrigerator on JD's online marketplace during the shopping promotion, and enjoyed a discount of about 20 percent with the national subsidy and shopping coupons offered by the platform.

Mo Daiqing, a senior analyst at the Internet Economy Institute, a domestic consultancy, said: "The expansion of the trade-in program has not only motivated consumers' enthusiasm to purchase and bolstered the sales of consumer electronic products and household appliances on online marketplaces, but also propelled the popularity of green and energy-saving commodities."

Chinese shoppers are becoming more rational and carefully review their needs, with an emphasis on the quality and value of commodities. "They are inclined to purchase premium merchandise with high cost-effectiveness," Mo said.

Retailers should step up investment in technological innovation, elevate the quality of products and upgrade supply chains to attract more young shoppers, she added.