The 24th issue of the journal “Qiushi” to be published on December 16 will feature an important article titled “Expanding Domestic Demand is a Strategic Move.” The article is a compilation of relevant important statements made between October 2015 and October 2025.
The article points out that expanding domestic demand is crucial for both economic stability and economic security. It is not a temporary measure but a strategic move. Implementing the strategy to expand domestic demand is necessary for maintaining the long-term, sustained, and healthy development of the economy, as well as for meeting the people’s growing needs for a better life. Efforts must be accelerated to address shortcomings in domestic demand, particularly in consumption, making domestic demand the primary driver and stabilizing anchor for economic growth.
The article emphasizes that a major economy’s strength lies in its internal circulation. It is essential to firmly grasp the strategic basis of expanding domestic demand, enabling all links of production, distribution, circulation, and consumption to rely more on the domestic market to achieve a virtuous cycle. Expanding domestic demand and opening up are not contradictory. The smoother the domestic cycle, the more it can form a gravitational field for global resources and factors, the more it will facilitate the establishment of a new development paradigm where the domestic cycle is the mainstay and domestic and international cycles reinforce each other, and the more it will help form new advantages in international competition and cooperation. The strategy to expand domestic demand must be organically integrated with deepening supply-side structural reform, with simultaneous and coordinated efforts on both the supply and demand sides to achieve a higher-level dynamic balance where demand drives supply and supply creates demand.
The article notes that insufficient aggregate demand is a prominent challenge currently facing economic operations. It is imperative to resolutely implement the outline of the strategic plan for expanding domestic demand, establish a complete domestic demand system as soon as possible, and focus on expanding consumption demand supported by income, investment demand with reasonable returns, and financial demand constrained by capital and debt. Consumption is a crucial engine for China’s economic growth. The most fundamental way to expand consumption is to promote employment, improve social security, optimize the income distribution structure, expand the middle-income group, and steadily advance common prosperity. A long-term mechanism for expanding household consumption must be established and improved, enabling residents to have stable incomes to spend, no worries to dare to spend, and an optimal consumption environment with a strong sense of gain to be willing to spend. The mechanism for expanding investment must be improved, effective investment space must be expanded, new infrastructure construction should be deployed appropriately ahead of time, investment in high-tech and strategic emerging industries should be increased, and the vitality of private investment should be continuously stimulated. Efforts must continue to deepen supply-side structural reform, persistently promote technological and institutional innovation, break through bottlenecks, choke points, and vulnerabilities in supply constraints, enhance the competitiveness and security of industrial and supply chains, and adapt to and meet existing demand with independently controllable, high-quality supply, while also creating and leading new demand. It is essential to closely integrate benefiting people’s livelihoods with promoting consumption, and investing in physical assets with investing in human capital, and resolutely dismantle the bottlenecks and blockages hindering the development of a unified national market.
