The new documents include “Shenzhen’s Comprehensive Measures to Promote Consumption Expansion and Quality Improvement” and “Shenzhen’s Action Plan for Promoting a New Round of Large scale Consumer Goods Exchange”
Shenzhen, which has entered the “trillion level consumer city” for the first time, will seize the opportunity to introduce a series of heavyweight documents to fully unleash consumption potential and further expand consumption scale.
These documents include a comprehensive “Shenzhen Comprehensive Measures to Promote Consumption Expansion and Quality Improvement”, as well as a segmented “Shenzhen Action Plan to Promote a New Round of Large scale Consumer Goods Trade in”, “Implementation Plan to Accelerate the Construction of a world-class tourist and leisure destination city”, “Several Measures to Further Improve the Convenience of Foreign Tourists Entering the Country”, and “Three Year Action Plan to Build a Global Famous Brand Capital”. This was learned by a reporter from First Financial News on April 29th from the fourth press conference of the “Promoting High Quality Development” series of the Shenzhen Municipal Government Information Office.
Zhang Feimeng, Director of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce, stated at the aforementioned press conference that Shenzhen will focus on accelerating the construction of a globally influential consumer center, comprehensively promoting the expansion and improvement of consumption throughout the city, promoting “buying the world, selling the world”, and making every effort to increase the “depth” of the global market.
Unleash the potential for consumer “rejuvenation”
In 2023, the total retail sales of consumer goods in Shenzhen exceeded 1 trillion yuan for the first time, becoming the fifth consumer city in China and the second trillion level consumer city in Guangdong Province. However, the recently released statistics for the first quarter of this year show that Shenzhen, which leads the top ten economic cities in terms of GDP growth rate, lags behind Suzhou, Wuhan, and Chongqing in terms of consumption performance, and even lower than the national average.
In the first quarter, the total retail sales of consumer goods in Shenzhen reached 246.384 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.3%, which is 0.4 percentage points lower than the national average. Looking at consumer types, retail sales of goods increased by 4.5%; Catering revenue increased by 2.4%. In the consumer upgrade category, the retail sales of communication equipment, household appliances, and audiovisual equipment for units above the quota increased by 9.6% and 10.4%, respectively.
Shenzhen is obviously unwilling to be a city that only knows how to make money but not how to spend it. Zhang Feimeng introduced at the aforementioned press conference that Shenzhen will soon introduce the “Shenzhen Comprehensive Measures to Promote Consumption Expansion and Quality Improvement”, fully unleashing consumption potential. In addition, a new round of large-scale consumer goods trade in action plan will be announced in Shenzhen to support the trade in of automobiles, home appliances, and consumer electronics products. “We also encourage various districts, e-commerce platforms, financial institutions, and production and sales enterprises to simultaneously introduce replacement subsidies, guiding consumers to purchase green and smart home appliances and electronic products,” said Zhang Feimeng.
Shenzhen will continue to create consumer promotion activity IPs, with a focus on 12 major consumption hotspots including electronic consumption, cultural and sports consumption, parent-child consumption, Shenzhen Hong Kong consumption, fashion consumption, catering and food, exhibition economy, night economy, commercial district consumption, e-commerce live streaming, automotive consumption, and consumer finance.
In order to enrich consumer supply, Shenzhen will establish a special team to introduce well-known domestic and foreign niche trendy brands, and increase efforts to introduce first stores, flagship stores, and new formats of stores. At the same time, we will make greater efforts to attract domestic and foreign time-honored enterprises and century old brand enterprises to settle in Shenzhen, and encourage various districts to carry out various forms of catering and consumption promotion activities. We will also create a concentrated carrier area for the development of trade enterprises, and support advantageous enterprises to engage in deep cooperation with domestic foreign trade merchants and brand merchants.
The 2024 Shenzhen Spring Flower Market was filmed on Aiguo Road in Luohu District, Shenzhen on February 3rd. Xinhua News Agency image
Seeking new breakthroughs in service consumption
In recent years, resident consumption has gradually shifted from physical consumption to service consumption represented by digital consumption, cultural tourism, and sports events. In order to actively adapt to this new trend, Shenzhen hopes to make every effort to promote new breakthroughs in cultural, tourism, and sports service consumption.
Ding Zhongyuan, Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports, introduced at the press conference that the bureau is leading the formulation of the “Implementation Plan to Accelerate the Construction of a world-class Tourism and Leisure Vacation Destination City”, cultivating and developing new tourism formats such as industrial tourism, scientific and technological research, low altitude tourism, and urban hiking, and creating a batch of “small and beautiful” and “beautiful and excellent” new performing arts spaces; At the same time, we are leading the research on “Several Measures to Further Improve the Facilitation of Entry for Foreign Tourists” and will propose optimization measures in terms of customs clearance experience, transportation, financial payment, etc., to further attract foreign tourists. In the first quarter of 2024, Shenzhen’s tourism industry received 177400 overnight foreigners, a year-on-year increase of 196.2%.
Ding Zhongyuan stated that Shenzhen will promote innovation and expansion in cultural, tourism, and sports consumption. This year, more top-level cultural performances and competitions will be introduced and held to encourage the integrated development of the cultural and tourism industry and create more new ways of playing; High standard construction of national sports consumption pilot cities, vigorously promoting emerging fashion sports such as drones, water sports, and ice and snow sports; At the same time, it will also support the innovative development of nighttime cultural and tourism consumption.
In terms of unleashing the potential of holiday cultural and tourism consumption, Shenzhen, as an immigrant city, has continuously made efforts to become one of the top ten popular tourist destinations in China during the Spring Festival period. Next, “we will further improve the mechanism for promoting cultural and tourism consumption during holidays, closely follow important time nodes such as May Day, summer vacation, and National Day, and promote the integration of tourism consumption activities with cultural performances, large-scale exhibitions, cultural and museum exhibitions, etc., to enhance the influence of the activities.” Ding Zhongyuan said.
Continuously optimizing the consumption environment
In order to create a favorable consumer environment, Shenzhen has made multiple pioneering attempts. For example, on January 1st of this year, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Consumer Rights Protection Regulations were officially implemented, establishing a “full chain” protection mechanism for consumer rights at the local legislative level. Shenzhen has also promoted the establishment of institutions such as the South China (Hong Kong) International Arbitration Court and the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area International Arbitration Center, deepening regional cooperation and linkage mechanisms for consumer rights protection. In addition, Shenzhen has innovated a new regulatory model of “commercial insurance+digital RMB+platform monitoring” and released digital RMB prepaid cards, achieving “full fund supervision, anytime refundable, and one code scan”.
The Shenzhen Market Supervision Bureau is the leading department for the construction of a trustworthy consumption environment in the city. Li Guowei, Deputy Director of the Bureau, introduced at the aforementioned press conference that in the next step, the bureau will focus on five actions to accelerate the construction of a first-class, safe, and trustworthy consumption environment.
One is the action of building a foundation for product quality. Develop a three-year action plan for the construction of quality infrastructure in the “20+8” industrial cluster, and establish a number of national quality inspection centers, technical standard innovation bases, and quality standard laboratories.
The second is the action to improve brand service quality. Accelerate the release of the three-year action plan to build a globally renowned brand capital, and implement the “three major projects” and full cycle “chain services” for Shenzhen brands.
The third is to standardize consumer order. Focusing on key areas such as professional markets and new areas and issues such as live streaming sales, we will continue to carry out special actions such as “protecting consumption” and “iron fists for people’s livelihoods”.
The fourth is the demonstration action of trustworthy consumption. Deeply carry out the creation of “trustworthy consumption commitment units”, and create a number of demonstration and leading “trustworthy markets”, “trustworthy stores”, “trustworthy online stores”, and “trustworthy catering”.
The fifth is to resolve consumer disputes at the source. Build a weak signal comprehensive intelligence monitoring system, improve the mechanism for diversified resolution of consumer disputes and litigation coordination, and improve relevant systems such as advance compensation, liability insurance, and group complaint warning.
“Shenzhen Strategy” for Expanding Consumption and Improving Quality
Shenzhen first proposed the strategic goal of “accelerating the construction of an international consumption center city” in 2021. In December 2022, the 6th Plenary Session of the 7th Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee proposed to “accelerate the construction of a consumption center with global influence”. Shenzhen, which is known as an “industrial city,” officially placed “strong consumption city” in a more important position.
On the road to sprinting towards a trillion level consumer city, Shenzhen has made many efforts. In 2023, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce formulated the “Shenzhen Commercial Network Plan”, focusing on building a four level commercial consumption space structure of “world-class, national level, regional level, and community level”. The two major commercial projects, Qianhai Sam’s and Longhua Kaike, which opened in the middle of last year and early this year, have become popular new landmarks in the Greater Bay Area. Not long ago, the Futian Central Business District was recognized as a “National Demonstration Smart Business District”. The reporter learned that this year, Shenzhen plans to open 34 new commercial complexes and build 300 “15 minute convenient living circles”.
In terms of building a gathering place for consumer brands, Shenzhen, like other cities, also attaches great importance to the “first store economy” and “first launch economy”, but it is different. It not only attracts “big stores”, but also vigorously introduces well-known emerging and niche trendy consumer brands. In the past three years, nearly 1600 new first stores, flagship stores, and new concept stores have been added throughout Shenzhen, with over 200 new stores added in the first quarter of this year. In addition, breakthroughs have been made in the creation of Shenzhen’s time-honored brands, with four Shenzhen brands including Xin Mark, Yongfengyuan, Synthetic Number, and Wufeng being selected as “Chinese time-honored brands” for the first time.
Based on its geographical advantage of being adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao, Shenzhen has made cross-border consumption a key direction for consumption expansion. Last September, Shenzhen released 21 measures to promote consumption, including 1 section and 3 measures to facilitate consumption by Hong Kong residents. In order to attract tourists from Hong Kong and Macau, various districts in Shenzhen have spared no effort in opening free bus routes to port commercial districts. In addition, Shenzhen has taken the lead in exploring cross-border payment “combination boxing”. As of the end of February this year, “not leaving Hong Kong” has opened over 350000 mainland accounts for Hong Kong people, with a total of fund transactions exceeding 20 billion yuan. Shenzhen has also effectively improved the convenience of international payments. As of now, the number of foreign cards that can be accepted by key merchants has increased to 90%, and there are over 200 departure tax refund stores in the city. Shenzhen has become a pilot city for “buy and refund” departure tax refunds.
Shenzhen is still making continuous efforts in promoting the integration of online and offline, and exploring new growth drivers of consumption. At present, many real-time retail enterprises such as Meituan, Dingdong, and Pupu are vigorously expanding their presence in Shenzhen. Live streaming and cross-border e-commerce are developing rapidly, with live streaming e-commerce bases represented by the Luohu Shuibei Jewelry Industry Belt and Longhua Dalang Fashion Industry Park blooming in multiple locations. The sales revenue of the “Online New Year’s Goods Festival” during this year’s Spring Festival exceeded 100 billion yuan. In the first quarter, the online retail sales of enterprises above designated size in the city increased by over 10%.