China's Eight Departments Issue Action Plan to Boost Smart Home Consumption

The Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly issued a notice on the Action Plan for Promoting Smart Home Consumption on September 2, 2026, and released it publicly on September 14, 2026. The action plan was formulated to implement the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, carry out the requirements of the Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China on enriching smart home scenarios and supporting age-friendly renovation and intelligent upgrading of older housing, adapt to the consumption needs of different groups by expanding quality supply, and further promote smart home consumption. It sets out measures in seven areas. Previously, on August 31, the Ministry of Commerce and six other departments jointly issued the Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Expansion and Upgrading of Commodity Consumption, which proposed that by 2030 total retail sales of consumer goods reach about RMB 60 trillion and that markets worth RMB 10 trillion each be cultivated in green consumption, smart consumption, and health consumption.

On expanding quality smart home supply, the notice proposes encouraging manufacturers to strengthen research and development of smart home products in conjunction with efforts to cultivate and open up full-industrial-chain digital home scenarios, and supporting home furnishing stores, shopping centers, and other venues in establishing smart home experience centers, whole-home smart and digital home model rooms. The notice calls for accelerating the cultivation of a group of large home-decoration enterprises and platforms that operate in good faith and provide standardized services, launching personalized and diversified renovation packages, and vigorously developing customized, order-based, and appointment-based services. It also calls for accelerating the creation of a group of smart home software and hardware products and integrated solutions based on domestic open-source operating systems.

On improving the smart home standards system, the notice proposes improving the intelligent grading and evaluation standards system for smart home products, accelerating the formulation and implementation of mandatory national standards such as those for smart home interoperability, and speeding up the integrated development of whole-home smart systems. It proposes that basic telecommunications enterprises enable IPv6 by default on home broadband network equipment in their own environments to raise the IPv6 connectivity rate of home networks. For newly built fully decorated residential housing, the notice specifies requirements for basic smart products within units, encourages fiber-to-the-room deployment, and calls for continued development and application of key standards for smart homes and smart communities.

On supporting smart home consumption, the notice proposes that, in accordance with the 2026 consumer goods trade-in policy arrangements, local authorities be supported in independently and reasonably determining subsidy categories and subsidy standards for smart home products based on local conditions, and in coordinating support for purchases of new whole-home smart systems. On increasing fiscal and financial support, the notice encourages financial institutions to develop diversified consumer finance products and services around household and home-decoration consumption needs, make good use of the fiscal interest subsidy policy for personal consumer loans, guide financial institutions to increase loan support for smart home consumption, and actively support consumers in purchasing smart home-related products.

On developing age-friendly smart homes, the notice proposes promoting age-friendly products such as home service robots, health monitoring, and smart care, guiding enterprises to adopt age-friendly designs in product dimensions, ease of operation, dialect recognition, and safety performance, and enriching the supply of age-friendly smart home products and home-decoration services. It proposes advancing silver-economy product certification in the age-friendly smart home field.

On unblocking the waste recycling service chain, the notice proposes guiding localities to set up waste home furnishing recycling points in a scientific and reasonable manner, incorporating the construction of recycling points into relevant plans, and providing land and space support; encouraging home and home-decoration enterprises to cooperate with recycling enterprises to provide services such as delivery of new products plus collection of old ones and internet-based recycling, and promoting the mobile recycling model of using vehicles in place of warehouses. On optimizing community convenience services, the notice proposes relying on efforts such as building 15-minute convenient living circles to set up comprehensive home renewal service stations in qualified subdistricts and communities, integrating convenience and benefit services such as maintenance, storage, and recycling and exchange, and creating whole-home smart experience spaces.