Author: Sun Lijian
Editor: Hong Xiaowen
2026 is the starting year of the &#34;14th Five-Year Plan.&#34; The government work report places &#34;efforts to build a strong domestic market&#34; at the top of the annual work agenda, clearly stating &#34;to stimulate the endogenous power of resident consumption and promote consumption policies in parallel.&#34; This signifies a shift in the approach to promoting consumption: from short-term stimulation to constructing a &#34;new infrastructure - new scenarios - new demographics&#34; integrated and dynamic cyclical endogenous growth ecosystem. The new growth points for consumption are deeply rooted in this systematic and profound reshaping.
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Sun Lijian (Director of the Financial Research Center at Fudan University, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Institute of World Economy, Fudan University)
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New Scenarios: Creating New Demand through High-Quality Supply
One of the challenges currently facing the Chinese economy is &#34;strong supply but weak demand&#34;—the coexistence of traditional supply surplus and unmet high-quality, personalized demand. The solution lies in leading and creating new demand through innovative supply. The report calls for &#34;developing new quality productivity according to local conditions,&#34; with its consumption focus aimed at fostering a series of new consumption scenarios that reshape lifestyles and create entirely new experiences. The three major potential scenarios worth noting are smart, low-altitude, and silver-haired.
Firstly, from the perspective of the smart economy, AI is evolving from a &#34;tool&#34; to a &#34;partner,&#34; reconstructing the life service chain. The government work report proposes &#34;promoting the accelerated adoption of a new generation of smart terminals and intelligent agents,&#34; deploying &#34;deepening and expanding 'artificial intelligence +.'&#34; This marks the evolution of AI from an &#34;assistant&#34; to a deeply embedded &#34;intelligent agent&#34; throughout the entire consumption process.
In this context, on one hand, the popularization of hardware is creating new consumption entry points. The 250 billion yuan old-for-new national bond policy will accelerate the adoption of AI smartphones, AI PCs, and smart connected vehicles. These devices integrate perception and decision-making capabilities, giving rise to new scenarios such as cross-border free travel, personal health management, and &#34;third space&#34; office entertainment in vehicles. On the other hand, intelligent agents will reconstruct service supply, with AI agents capable of understanding complex intentions and utilizing various tools, achieving a disruptive shift from &#34;people seeking services&#34; to &#34;services seeking people.&#34; Ordering food, hailing rides, and making appointments may all be handled by AI, reflecting a leap towards a &#34;one-stop&#34; subscription model and scenario-based integration in life services, particularly benefiting the expansion of service consumption in cultural tourism and healthcare.
Secondly, the low-altitude economy is breaking the ceiling of &#34;ground consumption&#34; and expanding three-dimensional space. The government work report lists the low-altitude economy as one of the emerging pillar industries, and its significance goes far beyond logistics. It is pushing consumption scenarios from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. For example, solving the &#34;last mile&#34; problem, achieving &#34;minute-level&#34; delivery in mountainous areas, islands, and emergency medical scenarios, activating e-commerce, fresh produce, and pharmaceutical consumption in specific regions, and creating previously non-existent demand;
For example, aerial tours create new experiences, with eVTOL and helicopter sightseeing transforming natural landscapes into payable aerial experience products, driving consumption in ticket sales, surrounding cultural and creative products, high-end accommodations, and more. This requires the construction of a network of takeoff and landing points and low-altitude flight routes, which itself is a new type of consumer infrastructure.
Finally, the silver economy and health economy focus on shifting from &#34;being cared for&#34; to &#34;active consumption,&#34; activating a blue ocean of services. On one hand, there is an expansion of &#34;elderly&#34; scenarios. Implementing subsidies for elderly care services for those with moderate to severe disabilities, increasing pensions, and expanding long-term care insurance coverage (which has reached 300 million people) directly reduces the preventive savings and care costs for the elderly, allowing the released consumption capacity to flow precisely into new scenarios of the &#34;silver economy,&#34; such as elderly tourism, age-friendly smart homes, and health management. On the other hand, there is an enhancement of &#34;young&#34; scenarios. Policies such as free education for the year before preschool, comprehensive childcare subsidies, and universal childcare will significantly reduce the burden on young families. This will not only stimulate consumption of maternal and infant products but also, on a deeper level, release parents' time and energy, making them more willing to participate in developmental consumption such as cultural tourism and fitness.
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New Groups: Precisely Empowering Potential Subjects
The fundamental driving force behind consumption growth lies in people, and policy resources need to be tilted towards the groups with the greatest consumption potential but the deepest constraints. The core logic is to reduce preventive savings through institutional arrangements and enhance marginal propensity to consume, transforming potential demand into effective demand.
First, for the &#34;elderly and young&#34; related groups, it is necessary to resolve the biggest concerns and release rigid consumption potential. For the &#34;elderly&#34;: rising pensions, expanded long-term care insurance, and the construction of community elderly care service networks create a safety net of &#34;income security and care support.&#34; This helps alleviate the elderly's concerns about medical care and disability, making them more willing to use their savings for quality of life consumption such as travel, health care, and social activities. Data shows that long-term care insurance has covered 300 million people, and the proportion of nursing beds in elderly care institutions will increase to 73%, meaning hundreds of millions of elderly people will be included in the coverage of service consumption.
For the &#34;young&#34;: from &#34;free education for the year before preschool&#34; to &#34;comprehensive implementation of childcare subsidies,&#34; from &#34;universal childcare&#34; to &#34;housing support for families with multiple children,&#34; policies have formed a full-chain cost-sharing mechanism. This will alleviate the educational and housing challenges faced by young families, enhancing their confidence and ability to engage in long-term consumption planning (such as buying cars, changing houses, and cultural tourism). The consumption capacity released by these policies will directly connect to new scenarios such as smart maternal and infant products, parent-child cultural tourism, and educational services.
Secondly, for low-income groups and new employment form workers, it is necessary to strengthen the foundation for income growth and broaden the boundaries of consumption. The government work report first proposed &#34;formulating and implementing an income growth plan for urban and rural residents&#34; and placed &#34;promoting income growth for low-income groups&#34; at the forefront. Increasing income is the cornerstone of consumption, and through &#34;improving salary and social security systems&#34; and &#34;increasing residents' property income,&#34; more workers can share in the benefits of growth
At the same time, the stability of new employment forms should be ensured. The government work report clearly states that pilot programs for occupational injury protection should be steadily and orderly expanded. This helps address the concerns of approximately 13 million new employment groups such as delivery riders and ride-hailing drivers, stabilizing their income expectations and making them stable providers and consumers of service consumption, thus forming a virtuous cycle of &#34;employment - income - consumption.&#34; They are the core users and supporters of &#34;new scenarios&#34; such as instant retail, smart terminals, and local life services.
Investment in &#34;real money&#34; in areas such as education, healthcare, elderly care, and housing will alleviate residents' concerns, significantly boosting their willingness to consume. Precisely empowering key groups essentially reshapes the &#34;demographic foundation&#34; of consumption, which is the most solid soil for sustainable consumption growth.
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New Infrastructure: Building the &#34;Digital Foundation&#34; for New Consumption Growth
The implementation of new scenarios and the coverage of new groups rely on the support of new infrastructure. From this year's government work report on the deployment of &#34;new infrastructure,&#34; a three-dimensional, intelligent consumption infrastructure system integrating &#34;digital - low-altitude - data&#34; is taking shape.
Firstly, digital and intelligent infrastructure serves as the &#34;computing power engine&#34; and &#34;data fuel&#34; for consumption. The government work report proposes &#34;implementing ultra-large-scale intelligent computing clusters, computing power and electricity coordination, and other new infrastructure projects&#34; alongside &#34;deepening the development and utilization of data resources,&#34; forming the core foundation for intelligent consumption. At the same time, strong and inclusive intelligent computing capabilities are a prerequisite for the widespread application of AI. This provides a cloud &#34;brain&#34; for AI smartphones, smart homes, and autonomous driving terminals, ensuring consumers can enjoy a smooth experience in any corner. The government work report mentions &#34;building high-quality data sets&#34; and &#34;improving the foundational system for data elements.&#34; This means promoting the orderly opening of public data and industry data, providing &#34;fuel&#34; for enterprises to develop precise and personalized consumption AI applications (such as personalized travel planning and precise health management), accelerating the flourishing of &#34;AI + consumption&#34; scenarios.
Secondly, low-altitude infrastructure is constructing a &#34;navigation network&#34; and &#34;regulatory system&#34; for three-dimensional consumption. The scaling of low-altitude consumption hinges on safe, efficient, and convenient aerial infrastructure and regulatory rules. On one hand, there is the physical facility network, including take-off and landing points, charging stations, and low-altitude intelligent control platforms, which serve as the &#34;airports&#34; and &#34;service stations&#34; for low-altitude logistics and aerial tourism consumption scenarios. On the other hand, there are soft rules and platforms. The national &#34;Interim Regulations on the Flight Management of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles&#34; and various local &#34;low-altitude airspace collaborative management&#34; pilot programs are constructing unified airspace designation standards, flight approval platforms, and emergency response systems. This is the &#34;digital traffic regulation&#34; for safe, orderly, and predictable low-altitude consumption, forming the foundation for building consumer confidence.
Finally, the &#34;consumerization&#34; upgrade of traditional infrastructure. Major transportation hubs and energy bases, as &#34;dual projects,&#34; will lay the foundation for the prosperity of regional consumption ecology by improving logistics efficiency and energy stability after completion
For example, efficient cold chain logistics facilities can directly support the explosion of fresh e-commerce and prepared food consumption.
The government work report shows that by 2025, the added value of the core industries of the digital economy will account for more than 10.5% of GDP, with a target of reaching 12.5% by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan. The realization of this goal relies on hundreds of billions of yuan in digital infrastructure investment each year. Similarly, the low-altitude economy aims to &#34;form a trillion-level industrial cluster,&#34; which is predicated on the prior establishment of infrastructure such as takeoff and landing points, flight routes, and air traffic control platforms. This reflects the policy logic of &#34;first creating water sources (technology/scenarios), then building waterways (infrastructure), ultimately forming a flow of water (consumption).&#34; Without new infrastructure, new scenarios are just castles in the air; the investment in new infrastructure is precisely to systematically reduce the &#34;institutional transaction costs&#34; and &#34;physical accessibility costs&#34; of new consumption.
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Driving endogenous consumption growth through &#34;systemic reshaping&#34;
The consumption growth path outlined in the 2026 government work report represents a profound paradigm shift. It does not rely on short-term, universal consumption stimulus but is committed to building an endogenous growth ecosystem that promotes mutual reinforcement and a virtuous cycle of &#34;new infrastructure—new scenarios—new demographics&#34;:
New infrastructure (soil and framework) provides foundational support for innovative supply and inclusive services through new types of infrastructure such as digital, low-altitude, and data, reducing the temporal and spatial barriers to consumption.
New scenarios (fruits and presentation) rely on new infrastructure and technological innovation to create intelligent, green, and experiential new products and services, actively creating and leading demand from the supply side, addressing the challenge of &#34;strong supply and weak demand.&#34;
New demographics (foundation and engine) enhance the consumption capacity and willingness of potential subjects such as the elderly and children, and low-income groups through &#34;investing in people&#34; livelihood projects, transforming policy dividends into tangible market demand.
These three dimensions are closely interconnected and empower each other: powerful computing power (new infrastructure) supports AI health assistants (new scenarios), which in turn serve elderly individuals needing health management (new demographics); low-altitude flight routes (new infrastructure) make fresh delivery to mountainous areas (new scenarios) possible, allowing residents there to conveniently shop online (new demographic consumption); childcare subsidies (new demographic policies) release family consumption capacity, while intelligent maternal and infant products and inclusive childcare services (new scenarios) perfectly accommodate this new expenditure.
Ultimately, in the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, this system will achieve &#34;promoting transformation&#34; through &#34;stabilizing the macroeconomy,&#34; laying a solid foundation for consumption in Chinese-style modernization. It conveys a clear message: the potential of Chinese consumption does not lie in simply &#34;distributing money to stimulate consumption,&#34; but in systematically activating people, empowering goods, and transforming scenarios through institutional innovation, technological empowerment, and livelihood guarantees, thereby opening up a more resilient, sustainable, and higher-quality path for consumption growth in a complex environment. The new growth points for consumption are embedded in this profound, systemic transformation and upgrading
SFC
Produced by | 21 Finance Client 21st Century Business Herald
Editor | Jin Shan

2026 is the first year of the "14th Five-Year Plan." The government work report emphasizes building a strong domestic market and proposes to stimulate residents' consumption endogenous power alongside consumption promotion policies. The new growth points in consumption lie in constructing a dynamic circular ecosystem of "new infrastructure - new scenarios - new demographics." The report points out that the intelligent economy, low-altitude economy, and silver economy are three major potential scenarios, where innovative supply will lead to new demand, reshaping lifestyles and consumption experiences

Consumer growth relies on new scenarios, new demographics, and new infrastructure