China will work to further develop consumer services to support high-quality economic development and meet the people's demand for personalized, diversified and quality services, according to a government guideline made public on Saturday.
The guideline, issued by the State Council (Cabinet), spells out 20 key tasks, including tapping the potential of consumption in sectors such as hospitality, domestic services, elderly care, childcare, entertainment, tourism, sports, education and training.
In the first six months of this year, China's retail sales of services increased 7.5 percent from a year ago, 4.3 percentage points higher than that of goods, official data showed. Service consumption has been a major driver in the growth of consumption. "With the adoption and entry into effect of this document, many specific rules will actually integrate into our lives, and generate a very strong driving effect on boosting consumption. The recovery and growth of consumption is also playing a more important role in solving the problem of a lack of effective demand in the supply and demand cycle. As a result, the recovery and growth momentum of the overall economy will be further consolidated," said Zou Yunhan, deputy director of the macroeconomic research office of the Department of Economic Forecasting under the State Information Center. The guideline aims to address key issues that hinder high-quality development of service consumption. Specifically, it focuses on solving the problem of insufficient effective supply in the field of service consumption, particular targeting the shortage of professional human resources in fields such as elderly care and domestic service. "People's demand is relatively high, but in fact there is not so much supply. At the same time, the quality of service needs to be further improved. For example, as far as the supply of human resources is concerned, we need the supply of more graduates from polytechnic schools, or some professional human resources from universities. If the overall service human resources team can be further developed, it would actually be more favorable for the growth of service consumption," Zou said.
The guideline also focuses on creating new consumption scenarios and opening the service industry wider to foreign investment, to enrich the consumption choices of Chinese customers
"For example, the access of the service industry in telecommunications, education, elderly care and medical care allow more high-quality foreign enterprises to enter our market and provide our residents with higher quality, or more targeted and more distinctive services, to meet people's diverse individual needs," she said.
China moves to advance high-quality development of service consumption
