State Council Approves Consumption Expansion Plan Targeting RMB 60 Trillion by 2030
The State Council has approved the 15th Five-Year Plan for Expanding Consumption, setting a target for total retail sales of consumer goods to reach approximately RMB 60 trillion by 2030. The plan lists quality service consumption as the first of six key tasks and deploys 28 measures across demand, supply, and institutional dimensions. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, final consumption expenditure contributed an average of 58.8% to economic growth, and retail sales exceeded RMB 50 trillion in 2025.
The 15th Five-Year Plan for Expanding Consumption, approved and issued by the State Council, proposes adhering to the strategic foundation of expanding domestic demand and better leveraging consumption's fundamental role in economic development. The plan specifies that by 2030, total retail sales of consumer goods will reach approximately RMB 60 trillion, the household consumption rate will improve significantly, and consumption's driving effect on economic growth will be further strengthened.
With global trade protectionism on the rise and external demand uncertainty increasing, the space for relying on external markets to drive growth is being squeezed. China has entered the middle-to-late stage of industrialization and urbanization, where the marginal utility of large-scale infrastructure investment is diminishing. The household consumption rate still lags behind that of developed economies, and consumption potential has yet to be fully released. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, final consumption expenditure contributed an average of 58.8% to economic growth, and total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded RMB 50 trillion in 2025.
The plan for the first time lists promoting quality and beneficial service consumption as the first of six key tasks, focusing on elderly care, childcare, cultural tourism, and health. It deploys 28 measures across dimensions including enhancing consumption capacity, optimizing the consumption environment, and improving institutional mechanisms, covering the removal of unreasonable restrictions in automobiles and housing, implementation of paid leave, and improvement of social security safety nets. The plan sets up nine special columns to detail implementation.
The plan makes systematic arrangements from the demand, supply, and institutional sides. On the demand side, it promotes synchronized growth of resident income and economic growth, improves the mechanism for reasonable wage growth, expands channels for property income, and reduces precautionary savings motives by optimizing the supply of public services in education, healthcare, and elderly care. On the supply side, it promotes new consumption scenarios such as artificial intelligence plus consumption and green consumption, using high-standard quality systems to drive upgrades in goods and services. On the institutional side, it accelerates the removal of unreasonable restrictions on consumption, improves fiscal and financial coordination support mechanisms, implements leave systems to guarantee consumption time, and directs more effective investment toward consumption infrastructure and livelihood shortcomings.