Recently, Hebei, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and other provinces have successively introduced implementation plans to expand consumption in key areas such as tourism, culture, sports and old-age care.
These "local versions" of the implementation plan are intensively introduced, and an important purpose is to actively expand emerging consumption, increase effective supply in the consumption field, and give full play to the basic role of consumption in economic growth.
In recent years, with the end of imitative wave-exclusion consumption stage in China, personalized and diversified consumption has gradually become the mainstream, and new consumption represented by service consumption, information consumption and fashion consumption has developed rapidly. The central and local governments are actively taking measures to release consumption potential to ensure that consumption continues to play a fundamental role in promoting economic development.
So, how big is the pulling effect of these new consumption on economic growth?
Promote economic growth to stabilize.
Consumption, investment and export are the "troika" to stimulate economic growth. For a long time in the past, China’s economic growth was mainly driven by investment and export, while consumption contributed less to China’s economic growth. In 2008, the contribution rate of China’s final consumption expenditure to GDP growth was only 45.7%, far below the level of most developed countries.
However, as governments at all levels speed up structural adjustment and promote industrial upgrading, the contribution of consumption to economic growth is constantly improving. In the first half of this year, the contribution rate of China’s final consumption expenditure to economic growth was 63.4%, ranking first in the "troika".
While the contribution rate of consumption to GDP growth has steadily increased, the pace of consumption structure upgrading has also been further accelerated. In recent years, with the change of Chinese residents’ consumption from paying attention to the satisfaction of quantity to the pursuit of quality improvement, and from tangible goods to more service consumption, the sales of quality-upgraded goods such as communication equipment, automobiles, housing-related goods and cultural goods are booming, and service consumption such as mass catering, cultural entertainment, leisure tourism, education and training, medical and health care, and health preservation has become a new consumption hotspot.
Pan Jiancheng, deputy director of the China Economic Prosperity Center of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that China’s current economic aggregate has jumped to the second place in the world, and it is in the stage of moving from middle income to high income countries. In this process, people have gradually changed from satisfying food and clothing and material wealth to satisfying spiritual needs, which will objectively bring about a fundamental change in consumption behavior. Moreover, the process of consumption upgrading often has a strong agglomeration effect, and people’s demand for emerging consumption is often explosive, which greatly shortens the time period from germination to active consumption.
Many economists pointed out that, from the mechanism point of view, the pulling effect of new consumption on economic growth is no different from that of traditional consumption, but the rapid growth of new consumption will drive the development of service industry, better hedge the downward pressure on the economy and ensure the steady economic growth.
Ning Ji Zhe, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, wrote that "most of the service industries are not capital-intensive industries and are less affected by investment fluctuations; Most of them are rooted in the local market and are less affected by fluctuations in the international market; High degree of product differentiation, less affected by demand fluctuation; Mainly driven by consumption, and consumption growth has strong stability, so the development of service industry can smooth economic fluctuations and enhance economic stability. Because the service industry is not sensitive to economic cyclical changes, it plays an important role in ironing out economic fluctuations. "
As the proportion of service industry continues to increase, the fluctuation of China’s economic operation is obviously reduced. The data shows that from 2011 to 2015, the standard deviation of GDP growth rate was 1 percentage point, while from 2006 to 2011, the standard deviation of GDP growth rate was 2.1 percentage points.
Drive the economic structure to optimize.
Many experts admit that the biggest contribution of new consumption to macroeconomic operation lies in further promoting the optimization of economic structure.
"The development of new consumption requires suppliers of goods and services to continuously improve the supply level, especially to enhance the supply capacity of high-level and personalized products or services, and constantly form new consumption points." Li Zuojun, deputy director of the Institute of Resources and Environmental Policy of the State Council Development Research Center, said that the upgrading of consumption structure will force the transformation and upgrading of supply to a great extent.
The rapid development of these new consumption has led to the adjustment of the supply system and the rapid development of the service industry, especially the middle and high-end service industry.
For example, with the rapid development of information consumption, a new generation of information technology, represented by cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, has been bred and flourished, and the Internet has become the leading force of innovation-driven development, occupying the initiative in international competition.
From 2013 to 2016, China’s Internet industry maintained a rapid growth trend. The operating income of Internet access and related services, Internet information services, software and information technology services and other Internet service enterprises above designated size increased by 21.5%, 32.4%, 17.5% and 28.0% respectively.
In the process of the supply system represented by the service industry moving towards the middle and high end, the economic structure of the whole society is also changing quietly, the first is the employment structure.
In recent years, despite the shift in China’s GDP growth rate, the overall employment situation has remained stable, which is closely related to the continuous development of the service industry and the increasing employment scale. "At present, the proportion of the primary industry in China is gradually declining, and the proportion of the secondary industry is changing slowly. Even due to structural adjustment, transformation and upgrading, the ability to absorb labor has declined, while the service industry has absorbed most of the labor transferred from the primary industry." Li Zuojun said.
With the formation of new consumption hotspots, the development of high-end service industry has entered the fast lane. In the first half of this year, the number of employees in service enterprises above designated size increased by 5.6% year-on-year, which was 4.9 percentage points higher than that in the secondary industry. Among all the newly added employees in enterprises above designated size, the newly added employees in service industry accounted for 73.7%, which was 47.5 percentage points higher than that in the secondary industry.
Another important change brought by new consumption to the economic structure is also reflected in the investment structure. For example, with the upgrading of residents’ consumption structure, investment in people’s livelihood areas such as tourism, culture, sports, health and wellness, education and training has grown rapidly. In addition, with the rise of information consumption, e-commerce, digital media and other modern service industries, which are mainly supported by high technologies such as information networks, are emerging one after another, and investment has also maintained rapid growth.
Promote the development of kinetic energy and accelerate the transformation
With the rapid development of new consumption, the emerging service industry has shown a good trend of vigorous development. It is worth noting that the development of emerging service industries is different from traditional service industries, and it emphasizes the important value of innovation drive.
Pan Jiancheng said that the accelerated development of emerging service industries can not only drive a number of traditional industries such as bicycle manufacturing to accelerate the pace of transformation and renew their vitality, but also provide a broader stage and unlimited imagination for innovative entrepreneurs, so that they have more opportunities to shine, which will provide important support for the formation of a new pattern driven by innovation.
In recent years, with China’s active development of service-oriented manufacturing and producer services, and accelerating the coordinated development of manufacturing and service industries, producer services have played an active role in helping manufacturing enterprises to reduce the cost of technological innovation, shorten the cycle of technological innovation, and realize the immediate transformation of innovation results, leading the new kinetic energy of China’s economic transformation and upgrading to accelerate growth. In 2016, the added value of industrial strategic emerging industries increased by 10.5% over the previous year, which was 4.5 percentage points higher than that of industries above designated size. At the same time of accelerating the development of strategic emerging industries, new products that meet the needs of structural upgrading and consumption are constantly emerging.
Xu Jianyi, director of the Service Statistics Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that with the continuous efforts of the "internet plus" policy and the active promotion of the national big data strategy, the number of Internet users, especially mobile Internet users, has increased rapidly, and the Internet economy has greatly changed people’s production and lifestyle, which has spawned many new modes of online and offline integration and promoted service innovation.
For example, the travel sharing platform represented by "mobike" and "Didi Chuxing" brings more convenience for people to travel; The knowledge service platforms represented by "Pig Eight Rings", "Zhihu" and WeChat WeChat official account provide new channels for service skill trading, knowledge realization and knowledge sharing. The housing sharing platform represented by "short rent Ant" and "short rent Pig" has greatly increased the utilization rate of vacant houses, and created a "human touch" short rent era.
In addition, with the rapid development of new consumption, the demand for personalization and diversification is released rapidly, which also provides more space for entrepreneurship and triggers a new wave of entrepreneurship.
Experts pointed out that the service industry does not require high capital scale, and the threshold and difficulty of starting a business are lower than that of manufacturing industry. In addition, in recent years, China has increased the power of simplifying administration, accelerated the pace of "reform of the business system" in the service industry, and comprehensively promoted the reform of the commercial system. The continuous release of the development potential of the service industry will promote the accelerated agglomeration of new development kinetic energy and make the service industry more dynamic in stimulating national economic growth in generate. (Economic Daily China Economic Net reporter Lin Huocan)