Xinhua News Agency:

The consumer goods industry is closely linked with people's well-being and is a traditional advantageous industry in China, and it is also the supply foundation for expanding domestic demand. My question is, how will the MIIT promote the high-quality development of the consumer goods industry and increase its role in propping up the entire industrial economy? Thank you. 

Tao Qing:

Thank you for the questions. The consumer goods industry covers all aspects of people's lives, including clothing, food, housing, daily necessities, transportation, childcare, education, health care, and elderly care. It also plays a vital role in creating employment, boosting export, and promoting economic growth. Most of China's consumer goods sectors have become market-based. They entered the international market early and have a solid ability to survive. From January to June this year, the value-added of the consumer goods industry increased by 4.6% year on year, demonstrating strong development resilience. Recently, the MIIT, in collaboration with other relevant departments, issued guidelines on the high-quality development of chemical fibers, industrial textiles, and light industries. We also issued policies such as an action plan on leveraging the role of digitalization to help the consumer goods industry increase the variety of products, raise their quality, and build brands. These efforts will deepen the supply-side reform and promote the industry's high-quality development. Going forward, we will focus on increasing the variety of products, raising their quality, and building their brands. We will take measures on both the supply and demand sides, and continuously improve the supply capacity of consumer products and services. We will strengthen areas of weakness, push ahead with industry upgrading, enhance sustainability, promote people's wellbeing, and meet people's needs for a better life.

The first is to promote consumption upgrades through innovative products. Focusing on health care, elderly care, childcare, home life, and other areas related to people's wellbeing, we will encourage enterprises to integrate customization, experience, environmental protection, intelligence, fashion, and other new consumer elements into their product design and manufacturing. We want them to create new demands through innovation and foster new businesses, scenarios, models, and growth engines to meet consumers' needs for multi-level, personalized, high-quality products and services.

The second is to bolster consumer confidence by improving supply. In clothing and textiles, home appliances, food and medicine, and other sectors, we will move faster to build factories demonstrating smart manufacturing, and achieve quality control throughout the life cycle and coordinated development of production, sales, and usage. We will accelerate the building of a quality traceability system for key consumer goods and optimize information inquiry services so that consumers can buy products confidently, use them with peace of mind, and have ever stronger confidence in consumption.

The third is to drive consumption growth with high-quality brands. To further leverage the role of consumption in sustaining growth, in the third quarter, the MIIT focused on the campaign to enhance product variety and quality and create name brands. We organized relevant local governments, departments, industry associations, and e-commerce platforms to hold special promotions, special exhibition tours, and industry activities. The aim was to strengthen the publicity of excellent enterprises and products, launch good products, build brand reputation, and promote stable growth. Thank you!