Activate the incremental blue ocean of the sinking market
2026-01-29
The recently held National Business Work Conference listed "stimulating the consumption vitality of sinking markets" as one of the core tasks of "deepening the implementation of the special action to boost consumption". The sinking market covering third tier and below cities, counties, towns, and rural areas, carrying 70% of China's population and 60% of the total retail sales of consumer goods, is becoming a new driving force for domestic consumption growth. Stimulating the consumption vitality of the sinking market is a strategic measure to vigorously boost consumption and build a strong domestic market. It has important strategic significance for accelerating the construction of a new development pattern and promoting high-quality development. In recent years, the vitality of China's sinking market has continued to burst, showing significant characteristics of a large population base, high marginal potential, and rapid structural upgrading. With over 900 million consumers, the consumption scale has steadily expanded, and the rural market continues to grow faster than the urban market. The consumption structure is shifting from "basic consumption as the mainstay" to "quality, service-oriented, and digital" parallel development. These characteristics overlap with each other, jointly promoting the sinking market to become an important field for boosting consumption. From an international perspective, emerging economies generally regard the sinking market as an important engine for driving consumption and economic growth. India is vigorously promoting the "Digital India" strategy, focusing on popularizing fiber optic networks and mobile broadband in remote rural areas, bridging the urban-rural digital divide, and activating rural consumption. Thailand continues to promote the "One Village, One Product" project, extending online shopping to rural areas, while actively cultivating the silver haired economy and promoting consumption growth. In contrast, China has three unique advantages in stimulating the consumption vitality of the sinking market: firstly, it has the advantage of a super large scale market, which provides a broad space for new business forms, models, and scenarios to emerge; Secondly, having a strong industrial and supply chain advantage is conducive to further enriching consumer supply and meeting consumer demand; Thirdly, it has significant policy advantages that can promote the sinking of resource factors and inject lasting momentum into the market. It should be soberly recognized that the current sinking market in China still faces prominent problems such as insufficient circulation facilities, poor market environment, hollowing out of business integration, and homogenization of consumption scenarios, which are obstacles to the release of consumer vitality. To further activate this incremental 'blue ocean', it is necessary to strengthen deployment in multiple aspects. Improve circulation facilities and break down barriers to consumption. Accelerate the construction of a national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network covering high-speed railways, highways, port clusters, air cargo hubs, and logistics nodes, and connect the "arteries" of cross regional circulation. Continue to improve the three-level logistics system between counties and villages, establish county-level distribution centers, township service stations, and village level service points, and facilitate the "micro circulation" of consumer goods going to the countryside and agricultural products leaving the village. Establish a unified logistics information standard and build a national level logistics big data platform, break the "information island", achieve real-time sharing of key data such as transportation status and inventory information, promote the construction of smart logistics, encourage regions with conditions to develop unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) feeder transportation and terminal distribution business in an orderly manner, continuously improve circulation efficiency, and reduce circulation costs. Optimize the market environment and enhance consumer confidence. Strengthen the regulatory system, innovate and deepen the "AI+off-site supervision" model, severely crack down on illegal activities such as counterfeiting and false advertising, and regulate market order. Strengthen the construction of the social credit system, record and disclose the credit information of business entities, improve the incentive and punishment mechanisms for trustworthiness, and assist consumers in making wise choices. Improve the consumer rights protection service system, smooth the channels for complaints and reports, strengthen the construction of consumer rights protection service stations, optimize the rapid handling and diversified resolution mechanisms for consumer disputes, and safeguard consumer rights. Deepen the integration of business formats and expand consumer space. Strengthen the innovative application of technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing in the sinking market, and accelerate the integration of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. Promote the deep integration of agriculture with tourism, education, and health care industries, and develop new forms of leisure agriculture such as leisure fishing, educational popularization, and homestay health care. Deepen the integration and development of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, accelerate the development of service-oriented manufacturing, and strengthen new formats such as flexible production, cloud manufacturing, shared manufacturing, virtual manufacturing, and industrial e-commerce. Promote the deep integration and development of culture and tourism, continuously enrich formats such as "intangible cultural heritage+tourism" and "performance+tourism", deepen the integration of "cultural tourism+hundred industries" and "hundred industries+cultural tourism", and develop formats such as travel and leisure, summer shelter, etc. according to local conditions. Enrich market supply and boost consumer willingness. Developing the first tier economy, silver haired economy, ice and snow economy, and low altitude economy, focusing on digital consumption, green consumption, and healthy consumption, and stimulating new business forms and models. Build a digital ecosystem for the system, vigorously promote the integration of online and offline, and create immersive and experiential scenes. Improve the green manufacturing service system and actively create green consumption scenarios in areas such as new energy vehicles, green home appliances, and green catering. Launch a new brand of fitness and sports, and build a group of high-quality consumption clusters that deeply integrate business travel, culture, sports, and health. Author: Han Yunxiao (Researcher at the Capital University Party Building Research Base of Beihang University)
Edit:Luoyu Responsible editor:Zhoushu
Source:ECONOMIC DAILY
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