China plans new measures to spur consumption, shifts focus to services

BEIJING: China plans to roll out new policies ‍for 2026 to 2030 ​to spur domestic consumption and tackle "prominent" supply-demand imbalances, ⁠with the services sector becoming a key focus, the country's state planner said on Tuesday. Chinese leaders have pledged to "significantly" lift household consumption's share of ‌the economy ‌over the next five years, but have not given a specific target. "The ‌issue of having strong supply, but weak demand in the current economic operation is indeed a prominent problem," Wang Changlin, vice head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told a press ​conference.

Wang did not go into ​detail on the specific measures the government would take to ‌better ‍align supply and demand.

China's economy grew 5% ‍last year, matching the government's target, as a boom ‌in Chinese exports offset weak domestic consumption, a strategy that is likely to be increasingly hard to sustain.


Industrial output rose 5.9% in 2025, outpacing the 3.7% growth in retail sales and underscoring the supply-demand imbalance. Zhou Chen, an official at the state planner, told the ‍briefing the government would continue to use trade-in subsidies to support consumption of goods such as EVs, ‍but its ⁠focus was shifting ⁠toward services.

Officials say services, including elderly care, healthcare and leisure, offer substantial room for growth.

"The services sector has now become a key focus in efforts to expand domestic demand," Zhou said.

In December, China deployed 62.5 billion yuan ($8.98 billion) in special treasury bond funds to support its 2026 consumer trade-in scheme for appliances and new-energy vehicles.