As his income has increased along with the booming local industries, Qiao Mingzhou, a
villager in east China’s Shandong province, has bought a new-energy vehicle, which is parked
near his electric tricycle in the neat and tidy yard of his home.
“My old electric tricycle can’t protect people from the wind and the rain, so I can’t use it to
send my grandson to and pick him up from school in windy and rainy days,” said the resident
in Hejia village, Niuzhuang township, Dongying city, Shandong.
Since China rolled out favorable policies to boost auto consumption and provided subsidies
for new-energy vehicle buyers, he has bought the new car from a store in Niuzhuang
township, Qiao added.
Niuzhuang is a major agricultural township. Its planting area of vegetables and fruits has
continuously expanded, and the annual per capita disposable income of local farmers has
exceeded 24,000 yuan ($3,766).
“Thanks to the increase of my income, I have gradually replaced my household appliances
with more advanced ones,” Qiao said, referring to his new air conditioner, fully automatic
washing machine, and other domestic appliances.
“We have purchased ‘a big thing’ this year. It is ultra-quiet and equipped with sterilization
function,” he said, pointing at a cylindrical vertical air conditioner in his living room.
Multiple favorable policies launched by the Chinese government have driven the upgrading of
farmers’ “shopping carts”.
The implementation of government policies that are aimed at boosting agriculture and
benefiting farmers has improved villagers’ quality of life, noted Shen Qiong, dean of the
economics department of the Business School of Zhengzhou University.
Almost each household in Hejia village owns a car, and the number of new-energy vehicles in
the village has continuously increased. Hejia village is building charging piles to satisfy
residents’ need, Qiao pointed out.
During the first 10 months of this year, the retail sales of consumer goods in rural areas of
China reached 4,753.3 billion yuan, up 14.4 percent, according to China’s National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS).
In October, the retail sales of consumer goods in rural areas rose 5.6 percent year on year, 0.8
percentage points higher than the increase in the retail sales of consumer goods in urban
areas, data from the NBS shows.
As Chinese economy continues to recover steadily, China’s rural consumption has thrived and
rural demands become vibrant, playing a more prominent role in stimulating economic
growth.
China plans to improve the urban-rural integrated consumption network, promote e-
commerce in more villages, optimize the county-level consumption environment, and
facilitate the upgrading of rural consumption, according to the country’s Outline of the 14th
Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-
Range Objectives Through the Year 2035.
Stimulating rural consumption and improving the scale and quality of consumption in
counties and townships are not only an inevitable path to promoting rural revitalization in an
all-round way, but an important link in tackling unbalanced and inadequate development and
an objective requirement of advancing the realization of common prosperity, which bear great
significance for smoothening domestic circulation and accelerating the construction of the
country’s new “dual circulation” development paradigm.
China has more than 2,800 county-level administrative regions and more than 38,000
township-level administrative regions, with a large population in counties and townships.
Over the past few years, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China’s rural areas, the per
capita consumption expenditure of rural residents, and online retail sales in rural areas have
all maintained rapid growth. Meanwhile, products representing consumption upgrading,
including automobiles, home appliances, digital products, and beauty products, and service
consumption have shown great room for growth.
China’s rural market still has huge room for improvement. In some villages, the
underdeveloped commercial facilities, monotonous products, and service models that are
relatively backward are restricting the improvement in rural residents’ consumption level.
Besides, farmers in the countryside covering a vast area are scattered, which makes the “last
mile” of delivery services still a head-scratcher.
It is necessary to accelerate innovation and improvement in service models and stimulate
consumption vitality to further promote the expansion and upgrading of the rural market.
The rural market is considered a blue ocean and emerging market with huge consumption
potential. It is believed that with the continuous improvement in infrastructure, increasing
high-quality supplies, and rural household consumption upgrading, the vitality of Chinese
rural market will surely be continuously stimulated, thus injecting stronger impetus into the
sustained and healthy development of the economy.
