Xinhua News Agency commentator: Adhere to the leading role of domestic demand and build a strong domestic market - Three Discussions on Learning and Implementing the Spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference

The Central Economic Work Conference has identified eight key tasks for next year's economic work, with the top priority being "adhering to domestic demand as the driving force and building a strong domestic market". To study and implement the spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference, we must deeply grasp the strategic considerations and practical requirements of this important deployment, continue to make efforts to expand domestic demand, further strengthen the domestic circulation, and provide strong guarantees for accelerating the construction of a new development pattern and promoting high-quality development.

Domestic demand is the basic driving force for China's economic development, and a strong domestic market is the strategic support for Chinese path to modernization.   In the first three quarters, the contribution rate of final consumer expenditure to economic growth reached 53.5%, an increase of 9 percentage points from the previous year, continuing to play the role of the main engine of economic growth. In the past five years, China has firmly implemented the strategy of expanding domestic demand, continuously improving the quality level of domestic supply, and continuously releasing consumption and investment demand. The supporting role of domestic demand in economic development has significantly increased. The continuous expansion of China's domestic scale, continuous improvement of quality, and continuous enhancement of international influence fully demonstrate the stable economic foundation, multiple advantages, strong resilience, and great potential of our country, reflecting the supporting conditions and basic trends for long-term improvement.

Building a complete domestic demand system is related to China's long-term development and stability. Currently, China's economic development is facing new challenges such as the deepening impact of external environmental changes and the prominent contradiction between strong domestic supply and weak demand. Expanding domestic demand is not only an effective way to resist external shocks and promote the stable and positive development of China's economy, but also a strategic measure to promote high-quality development and build a new development pattern. The advantage of a major economy is that it is dominated by domestic demand and internally recyclable. China has a population of over 1.4 billion and a large middle-income group. The demand for service consumption continues to be released, and the further integration of consumption with modern technology and production methods has driven the rapid growth of emerging consumption. As the world's most promising consumer market, China is constantly growing and expanding, which is our greatest confidence in responding to risks and challenges. We must firmly implement the strategy of expanding domestic demand, and transform China's advantages in the super large market and potential for domestic demand into a powerful driving force for stable, healthy, and sustainable economic development.

Consumption is the ultimate demand and the enduring driving force of economic growth. To build a strong domestic market, it is necessary to place greater emphasis on boosting consumption. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that the consumption rate of residents should be significantly increased during the 15th Five Year Plan period. We need to deeply implement the special action to boost consumption, formulate and implement plans to increase the income of urban and rural residents, stabilize employment, promote income growth, and stabilize expectations, and effectively enhance residents' consumption ability. We should focus on expanding the supply of high-quality goods and services, optimizing the implementation of large-scale equipment updates and the policy of exchanging old for new consumer goods, and promoting the expansion and upgrading of commodity consumption. We must make up our minds to clean up unreasonable restrictions in the consumption sector, further unleash the potential of service consumption, fully unleash potential consumption, continuously enhance the driving force of domestic demand in driving economic growth, and form a virtuous cycle of mutual promotion and iterative upgrading between consumption and supply.

To build a strong domestic market, we must leverage the crucial role of investment in optimizing the supply structure. Investment is both a current demand and a future supply. We need to optimize the government investment structure, promote investment to stop falling and stabilize, appropriately increase the scale of investment within the central budget, optimize the implementation of national major strategies and key security capacity projects, optimize the management of the use of local government special bonds, and give full play to the driving and amplifying role of government investment. We need to continue to leverage the role of new policy based financial instruments, effectively stimulate the vitality of private investment, improve the long-term mechanism for private enterprises to participate in major project construction, systematically break through the bottlenecks, difficulties, and pain points that restrict private investment, and enable social capital to "be willing to invest, dare to invest, and be able to invest". Urban renewal is not only a livelihood project, but also a development project that can play an important role in attracting investment, expanding domestic demand, and stabilizing growth. To promote high-quality urban renewal and effectively empower high-quality economic and social development.

General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out that "expanding domestic demand is not only related to economic stability, but also to economic security. It is not a stopgap measure, but a strategic move." 2026 is the beginning year of the 15th Five Year Plan, and China's economic ship will usher in a new departure. Let's unify our thoughts and actions, implement the decisions and arrangements of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, adhere to the domestic demand leadership, build a strong domestic market, constantly transform China's large-scale market advantages into competitive advantages and development victories, and strive to achieve the economic and social development goals for next year, so as to lay a solid foundation for comprehensively promoting the construction of a strong country and national rejuvenation with Chinese path to modernization.