Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and nine other departments issued the "Opinions on Further Stimulating the Vitality of Submerged Markets and Activating County Consumption", which includes 18 measures to extend the tentacles of service consumption to vast counties, from optimizing the business environment, enriching service supply to promoting deep integration of commerce, agriculture, culture, tourism, and sports. This deployment is a vivid footnote to the accelerated expansion and improvement of service consumption in China.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2026, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China reached 2.48722 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 5.3% in service retail sales. From the dazzling lights of river cruise ships to the digital human interaction in cultural museums, from the AI "building" of intelligent cockpits to the diverse care of community elderly care, scene after scene reflects the profound changes in China's consumer market: service consumption is becoming an important engine to drive economic growth.
New scenario: Innovation reshapes consumer experience
As night falls, the lights on both sides of the Haihe River in Tianjin shine brightly. The cruise ship, loaded with tourists, slowly sailed past the Lion Grove Bridge. On the deck, tourists held up their phones to record the light and shadow of the western-style buildings on both sides. Inside the cabin, there were bars or cross-talk tea houses. From a single "boat sightseeing" to a composite experience of "performing arts+food+cultural and creative", the small boat trip is being redefined.
From buying goods to buying services, from emphasizing practicality to emphasizing experience, service consumption is a direct reflection of the yearning for a better life. Recently, the State Council approved the "15th Five Year Plan for Expanding Consumption", which proposed the goal of achieving rapid growth in the consumption of goods and services in the whole society and a total retail sales of consumer goods of about 60 trillion yuan by 2030. Promoting the improvement of service consumption quality and benefiting the people is placed in a key position.
Wang Yiming, former deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, stated that during the 14th Five Year Plan period, China's service retail sales will grow at an average annual rate of over 8%. Service consumption is becoming the main driving force for consumption growth, showing multiple characteristics such as cross-border integration and cutting-edge technology penetration.
At the Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, an interactive large screen is surrounded by tourists. Did you really dream of Du Liniang when you created "The Peony Pavilion"? "As soon as the tourist finished speaking, the" young Tang Xianzu "on the screen bowed and responded with a warm voice," Where emotions come, dreams also come true. "This digital human IP designed based on Tang Xianzu's self portrait not only retains the characteristics of Ming Dynasty clothing, but also incorporates cartoonish expression, allowing traditional culture to travel through time and space and communicate face-to-face with tourists.
Tourists' demand for cultural consumption is shifting from one-way viewing to interactive experiences, with a greater emphasis on participation and immersion, "said Rao Fang, director of the Tang Xianzu Memorial Hall.
Not limited to cultural tourism, advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data are constantly breaking service boundaries. At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai, the "Super Intelligent Agent" jointly developed by Qianli Technology, Shanghai Jieyue Xingchen Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., and Geely Automobile attracted a lot of attention. Can you recommend a place for me to watch a soccer game near People's Square, and on the way, I need to pick up a friend on the Bund and help me plan my driving route... "The AI" Tuzi "on the car uses natural language to communicate with passengers, quickly providing route and destination planning, and even completing daily life services such as movie tickets and restaurant reservations.
Intelligent cars are essentially wheeled robots that are undergoing a collaborative evolution of the 'cerebellum' and 'brain', "said Chen Qi, CEO of Qianli Intelligent Driving. The car cockpit is gradually becoming an intelligent partner, constantly extending to offline consumer scenarios.
New momentum: the deep logic of capacity expansion and quality improvement
Why can service consumption become a key driving force for economic growth? This can be seen from the trend of economic development. Wang Yiming stated that based on international experience, a per capita GDP of around 15000 US dollars is often a critical point for rapid growth in service consumption. By 2025, China's per capita GDP will approach 14000 US dollars, and the consumption structure will accelerate from being dominated by commodity consumption to being dominated by service consumption.
The intergenerational transition has formed a demand pattern for service consumption. KPMG China Vice Chairman Wu Xuchu said that young people are more concerned about emotional expression, and the popularity of the "guzi economy" is the best example. "These products meet not functional needs, but emotional needs. On the other hand, the expectations of middle-aged and elderly people with consumption power for service quality continue to increase, driving the rapid expansion of industries such as elderly care.
At the same time, with the continuous increase in income, the values of China's consumer market are also upgrading and reconstructing. Liu Xiaolong, Global Senior Partner of Kearney (Shanghai) Enterprise Consulting Co., Ltd., believes that from "functional priority" to "emotional value", from "single transaction" to "long-term service", expanding and improving service consumption is not only a consumer demand, but also a requirement for the overall socio-economic development. Services are also being productized and can be subscribed, priced, and paid annually and monthly. At the same time, the premium ability of high-quality services is emerging - the willingness to pay for high-end services such as cultural tourism and drama continues to increase. A large number of high-quality service forms have emerged in cross-border fields, including commodity service, retail experience, cultural commercialization... The emergence of cross format services and handover zone services has become a significant trend.
On this basis, the development of artificial intelligence intersects with the upgrading of consumption structure. The penetration of AI into the service consumption field, such as smart education and intelligent health care, is giving birth to a large number of new business models. Associate Professor Wang Dandan from the School of International Business at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics believes that technology has reshaped the service supply model, and through data-driven and intelligent applications, service efficiency, accuracy, and convenience will be further improved. Wu Xuchu also believes that the AI era has made it possible to replicate the "consumer insights" that were previously only achievable by excellent store clerks. In the past, we have always emphasized consumer insights, mainly because companies want to understand the needs of the public. In the future, this insight can happen to everyone - truly enabling brand and product owners to produce products that are suitable for everyone. "Wu Xuchu said that AI is expected to integrate capabilities in flexible production, private marketing, and other fields to meet the personalized needs of each consumer.
Sun Yi, Vice Dean of the School of International Business at Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, believes that with the continuous upgrading of residents' consumption demand, the continuous empowerment of new technologies, and the strengthening of policy support, service consumption has entered a critical stage of transformation from scale expansion to quality improvement, and from factor driven to innovation driven.
New Path: Activate the Persistent Motivation of Service Consumption
The road to capacity expansion and quality improvement is not smooth. Consumer confidence needs to be further restored, there is room for optimization in supply and demand matching, and some areas of institutional supply still need improvement. These are not only problems faced in development, but also indicate the direction for future efforts.
The sustained growth of service consumption ultimately depends on residents' consumption ability and willingness. Stabilizing expectations and increasing income are important strategies for unleashing the potential of service consumption. The interviewed experts suggest that we should adhere to the priority orientation of employment, improve the mechanism of reasonable wage growth, broaden channels for increasing income, and enhance the consumption ability of middle-income groups. Expanding service consumption should be deeply linked with stable employment policies, creating stable market demand in areas such as culture and tourism, elderly care, and childcare, and forming a virtuous cycle of "consumption driving employment and employment supporting consumption". At the same time, we will comprehensively promote the construction of public service systems such as education, healthcare, elderly care, housing, and childbirth, alleviate long-term expenditure pressure on residents, and stabilize consumption expectations; Improve the long-term mechanism for promoting service consumption, explore precise and sustainable policy support methods around key areas such as culture and tourism, health and elderly care, sports and fitness, and home economics. Experts believe that only by enabling residents to consume, dare to consume, and be willing to consume, can the spring water of service consumption truly come alive.
At the same time, the improvement and upgrading of service consumption require the joint efforts of the government, market, and enterprises. Liu Xiaolong believes that the policy side should provide space for fault-tolerant innovation and continuously evaluate and adjust; The industry should strengthen talent training and enhance the recognition of the value of service premium; On the enterprise side, it is necessary to enhance the insight, narrative ability, and community operation ability of service products, and open up broader space for service consumption through continuous innovation on the supply side from multiple parties. At the same time, continuously improve the modern service standard system, enhance the level of service standardization and branding; Encourage the deep integration of modern service industry with advanced manufacturing, cultural industry, sports industry, and digital economy; Vigorously develop new business models such as debut economy, performing arts economy, sports economy, ice and snow economy, and low altitude economy.
Service consumption has the characteristics of strong experience, high degree of personalization, and difficult quality evaluation. Coupled with the background of new technological changes, it puts forward higher requirements for the institutional environment. Sun Yi suggested improving market access, industry supervision, data sharing and other rules around platform economy, digital consumption, and cross-border integration of new business models, and promoting cross departmental and cross regional collaborative supervision. Wu Xuchu reminded that while AI brings efficiency improvements, it also brings new regulatory issues. In the future, governments and industry regulatory authorities need to explore more cutting-edge AI integration to better protect consumer rights.