he Chinese government has taken an array of measures to fulfill the Resolution on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization, which was passed at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held from July 15 to 18 in Beijing.
A typical example was a document on promoting service consumption issued by the State Council in early August.
The document proposes 20 specific measures to promote consumption in services, covering sectors such as hospitality, housekeeping and elder care. In addition, it proposes to boost consumption in leisure sectors like entertainment, sports and tourism, foster new consumption and optimize the consumption environment through the use of advanced digital and AI technologies.
The document also pledges to loosen restrictions on foreign investors’ entry to the service sector.
All of these measures are intended to “refine long-term mechanisms for expanding consumption, reduce restrictions, boost public spending as necessary and actively promote the debut economy,” the Resolution said.
Experts said the measures cover both short-term stimulation and long-term improvements and upgrading.
Similar measures were rolled out earlier as China’s economy has been encumbered by low consumption. In June, authorities released a document on promoting new consumption scenes and growth points. In March, nine government departments jointly issued a guideline on promoting the high-quality development of the hospitality industry.
Official data shows that these measures have preliminarily taken effect as the country’s hospitality revenue in the first half of 2024 rose by 7.9 percent year-on-year.
Promoting urbanization and integrated urban-rural development is another focus of the deepening reform, as the Resolution defined it as key to Chinese modernization.
Soon after the third plenary session, China’s State Council issued a five-year action plan on implementing new, people-oriented urbanization, proposing to spend five years raising the urbanization rate from the current 66.16 percent to about 70 percent. It includes easing residential registration and improving employment and public services for rural migrants, and speeding up industrialization in suitable areas.
Analysts applauded the plan to delink residence registration from access to basic public services, saying it will also greatly stimulate consumption.
Another highlight of the plan is that it has clarified how to promote new urbanization based on the development of counties and towns where pillar industries will be tailored based on each area’s actual situation.
It also states how to develop metropolitan areas in modern big cities to improve public services and promote integrated development between big cities and satellite cities.
At the same time, the government established a service website targeting small- and medium-sized enterprises to fulfill what the Resolution says aims to “ensure that economic entities under all forms of ownership have equal access to factors of production in accordance with the law, compete in the market on an equal footing, and are protected by the law as equals.”
Other documents or measures include the People’s Bank of China’s leading tasks in the second half of 2024 to expand financial support for the real economy, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s implementing rules on managing key national projects and the Regional Cooperation Office of the Yangtze River Delta’s three-year action plan on integrated development of Yangtze River Delta regions.
Analysts said that more measures and documents will come in the future, as the Resolution has set a deadline for all the reforms: to finish them by the time that the PRC celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2029.
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