Recently, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Service Consumption," proposing overall requirements for high-quality development such as "expanding the opening up of the service industry, focusing on improving service quality, enriching consumption scenarios, and optimizing the consumption environment, using innovation to stimulate the endogenous driving force of service consumption, and cultivating new growth points for service consumption." The original text is as follows:

People's Governments of all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government; all ministries and commissions of the State Council; all institutions directly under the State Council:

In order to optimize and expand the supply of services, release the potential of service consumption, and better meet the personalized, diversified, and high-quality service consumption needs of the people, the following opinions are hereby put forward.

Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, fully implementing the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the CPC and the second and third plenary sessions of the 20th CPC Central Committee, comprehensively and accurately implementing the new development philosophy, accelerating the construction of a new development pattern, coordinating the expansion of domestic demand and deepening supply-side structural reforms, expanding the opening up of the service industry, focusing on improving service quality, enriching consumption scenarios, and optimizing the consumption environment, using innovation to stimulate the endogenous driving force of service consumption, and cultivating new growth points for service consumption, to provide strong support for high-quality economic development.

(1) Catering and Accommodation Consumption. Improve the quality of catering services, and cultivate famous dishes, snacks, chefs, and restaurants. Encourage localities to inherit and carry forward traditional culinary skills and catering culture, cultivate characteristic snack food industrial clusters, and create "famous food towns" and "famous food villages." Hold the "China Food Fair" series of activities, and support localities in carrying out characteristic catering consumption promotion activities. Encourage internationally renowned catering brands to open their first stores and flagship stores in China. Improve the quality of accommodation services and the level of foreign-related services, cultivate a number of high-end hotel brands and homestay brands, and support the integrated development of the accommodation industry with tourism, health preservation, and research and study. Legally and properly revitalize idle rural houses and collectively-owned construction land to develop rural hotels and inn homestay services.

(2) Household Service Consumption. Support the development of employee-based household service enterprises and smooth the career development channels for household service personnel. Deepen the household service labor docking action, promote household services into communities, and increase the supply of household services. Implement a skill upgrading action for household service workers, promote the construction of household service brands, and create women's household service brands. Guide the formulation of household service covenants, optimize the household service credit information platform and the "household service credit check" function, and promote the electronic version of the "home service certificate."

(3) Elderly Care and Childcare Consumption. Vigorously develop the silver-haired economy, promote the development of the smart health elderly care industry, promote barrier-free construction in public spaces and consumption venues, and improve the level of home adaptation for the elderly. Accelerate the improvement of a coordinated elderly care service system that combines home, community, and institutions, and medical care, health care, and rehabilitation, carry out actions to improve basic elderly care services at home and in the community, and encourage vocational schools to strengthen talent cultivation. Increase the supply of elderly care and childcare services through multiple channels, support the use of vacant sites to build, renovate, and expand elderly care and childcare institutions in accordance with laws and regulations, and promote the reduction of operating costs. In conjunction with the renovation of old residential areas, the construction of complete communities, the construction of community life circles, and the construction of embedded service facilities in urban communities, optimize the layout of household services, elderly care, childcare, and meal assistance facilities. Strictly implement the requirements for the simultaneous planning, construction, acceptance, and delivery of supporting elderly care and childcare service facilities with newly built residential areas. Ensure that elderly care and childcare institutions use water, electricity, gas, and heating at residential living prices. Support financial institutions in optimizing risk management and actively providing financial products and services suitable for the characteristics of the funding needs of inclusive elderly care and childcare institution projects.

(4) Cultural and Entertainment Consumption. Deepen the nationwide cultural and tourism consumption promotion activities, and continue to implement the "Hundred Cities and Hundred Districts" cultural and tourism consumption action plan. Strengthen the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage, and develop key cultural and creative projects with regional and ethnic characteristics. Expand the supply of cultural performances, improve approval efficiency, and increase the number of performances. Enrich film supply, support the distribution of films through diversified models such as segmented distribution, and promote related film consumption. Improve the quality of online literature, online performances, online games, radio and television, and online audio-visual content, deepen the governance of multi-level television charges and complex operations, accelerate the development of ultra-high-definition television, and encourage the development of new formats such as immersive experiences, script entertainment, digital art, and online broadcasting.

(5) Tourism Consumption. Strengthen the construction of national cultural and tourism consumption demonstration cities, promote the innovative and standardized development of national-level nighttime cultural and tourism consumption gathering areas, and implement the Beautiful Life Vacation and Leisure Project and the Rural Tourism Quality Improvement and Efficiency Enhancement Action. Promote the integrated development of commerce, tourism, culture, sports, and health, improve the experience and interactivity of projects, launch various types of characteristic tourism products, encourage the development of new formats such as cruise ships and yachts, RV camping, and low-altitude flight, and support the integrated development of formats such as "music + tourism," "performance + tourism," and "event + tourism." Increase the number of special trains for elderly tourism, make elderly-friendly and comfortable modifications to the carriages, and enrich tourism routes and service supply. Encourage localities to formulate and implement policies such as preferential tourist ticket prices and free opening during the off-season. Improve the quality of transportation services, improve integrated transportation, car rental, and other services, and facilitate passenger travel. Optimize entry policies and consumption environment, accelerate the restoration of flight frequencies, provide diversified payment services, study expanding the scope of visa-free countries, and deepen cultural tourism annual activities.

(6) Sports Consumption. Revitalize idle venues and sites, guide social forces to legally and properly transform old factories, warehouses, and old commercial facilities, and increase sports consumption venues. Encourage the holding of various sports events, create sports event brands with independent intellectual property rights, apply for or introduce influential international top-level events, and cultivate professional operation teams. Guide localities to launch mass sports events with distinctive characteristics. Actively develop ice and snow sports, and continuously promote the popularization and development of ice and snow sports nationwide. Deepen the pilot work to promote sports consumption, and cultivate a number of national sports industry and sports tourism development carriers.

(7) Education and Training Consumption. Promote higher education institutions, scientific research institutions, and social organizations to open up high-quality educational resources to meet the diversified and personalized learning needs of the public. Promote the improvement of quality and efficiency in vocational education, and build high-level vocational schools and majors. Promote social training institutions to improve service quality to meet public needs. Guide schools to introduce high-quality third-party institutions with relevant qualifications to provide non-subject-based public after-school services through purchasing services and other methods in accordance with relevant regulations. Encourage high-level cooperation in running schools with internationally renowned higher education institutions in China.

(8) Residential Service Consumption. Encourage qualified property service enterprises to cooperate with elderly care, childcare, catering, and household service enterprises to develop a "property service + life service" model. Promote new models such as intelligent security, smart parking, and intelligent access control to improve community service levels and living experiences. Cultivate leading enterprises that provide one-stop, standardized products and services such as renovation design, customized decoration, and smart home. Encourage qualified areas to support residents in carrying out home renovations and partial renovations.

(9) Digital Consumption. Accelerate the digital empowerment of life services, build new consumption scenarios such as smart business districts, smart streets, and smart stores, develop new models such as "Internet +" medical services and digital education, accelerate the layout of new formats such as unmanned retail stores, self-service lockers, and cloud lockers, and support the development of e-sports, social e-commerce, and live e-commerce. Accelerate the construction and upgrading of information consumption experience centers, and launch a batch of new information consumption projects. Carry out pilot projects for digital home construction to better meet residents' needs for intelligent services of home products and online social services.

(X) Green Consumption. Establish and improve a green and low-carbon service standard, certification, and labeling system, improve green design standards, and enhance the recognition of the green service market and corporate benefits. Promote the application of advanced green and low-carbon technologies, improve energy efficiency and water efficiency labeling management, and improve the green level in home decoration, travel, tourism, and express delivery.

(XI) Healthy Consumption. Cultivate and expand new service formats such as health checkups, consultations, and management. Promote the development of "Internet + medical health", quickly realize the interconnection and interoperability of medical data, and gradually improve the "Internet +" medical service medical insurance payment policy. Encourage the development of commercial health insurance products that meet diversified and personalized health security needs. Further promote the integrated development of medical care and elderly care, and support medical institutions in carrying out integrated medical care and elderly care services. Support the development of TCM time-honored brands, and improve the service level of health preservation, rehabilitation, and recuperation. Strengthen the functions of retail pharmacies in health promotion and nutritional health.

(XII) Innovate Service Consumption Scenarios. Carry out service consumption quality improvement and people's livelihood improvement actions. Carry out a series of service consumption season promotional activities focusing on key areas that are close to people's lives, have great demand potential, and have a strong driving effect. Promote the transformation and upgrading of pedestrian streets, accelerate the construction of urban 15-minute convenient life circles, improve the county-level commercial system, improve the urban-rural service consumption network, enrich the supply of rural life services, and improve the service supply capacity and consumption level.

(XIII) Strengthen the Cultivation of Service Consumption Brands. Explore and carry out quality service commitment activities. Support service enterprises to strengthen brand cultivation, operation, and protection, give play to the leading role of Chinese time-honored brands and characteristic traditional brands, and cultivate a batch of service brands with good service quality, sufficient innovation momentum, and strong driving effect.

(XIV) Expand the Opening Up of the Service Industry. Relying on platforms such as national service industry expansion and opening-up comprehensive pilot zones and national service trade innovation and development pilot zones, actively connect with international high-standard trade rules. Relax market access for the service industry, continuously deepen the opening up of the telecommunications, education, elderly care, medical care, and health sectors, and promote the full implementation of opening-up measures in the technology service and tourism sectors. Hold exhibitions such as the China International Import Expo and the China International Service Trade Fair to attract more internationally renowned enterprises to invest and more service formats to land.

(XV) Strengthen Service Consumption Supervision. Strengthen cross-departmental joint supervision and severely crack down on acts such as false advertising, online fraud, and information leakage. Encourage communities, shopping malls, scenic spots, and platform enterprises to set up consumer rights protection service stations to promote the resolution of consumption disputes at the source. Explore the working mechanism for handling malicious claims, crack down on extortion in the name of complaints and reports, and maintain a good business environment and the legitimate rights and interests of operators.

(XVI) Guide Honest and Compliant Operations. Relying on the "Credit China" website and the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, launch the "Credit Information" section, strengthen the collection and publicity of credit information such as registration and filing, administrative licenses, and administrative penalties for relevant operating entities, and guide more operating entities to be honest and trustworthy. Strengthen service quality monitoring and evaluation, improve the evaluation index system, regularly publish monitoring and evaluation results, and encourage third-party institutions to conduct service consumption evaluations.

(XVII) Improve Service Consumption Standards. Optimize the standardized layout of the service industry and cultivate standardized brands in the service industry. Formulate and revise standards related to service consumption, improve standards in the fields of culture, tourism, catering and accommodation, housekeeping services, elderly care and childcare, home decoration, and business services, and develop new consumption standards such as digital consumption, green consumption, and healthy consumption. Strengthen the construction of certification systems in the field of service consumption.

(XVIII) Strengthen Financial and Tax Support. Encourage regions with conditions to utilize existing funding channels and actively guide social investment to support the digital empowerment of life services, the cultivation of industrial clusters and agglomeration areas, the construction of public service platforms, and standardization construction. Encourage government-backed financing guarantee institutions to provide financing credit enhancement support for qualified small and micro service enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households. Guide financial institutions to optimize credit products, provide differentiated services, and increase credit support for key areas of service consumption in accordance with the principles of controllable risk and commercial sustainability, and increase the supply of financial products that meet the needs of the development of new consumption formats such as the sharing economy. Promote the deep integration of commercial health insurance and health management, and enrich the supply of commercial long-term care insurance. Implement the personal income tax special additional deduction policy for childcare under the age of 3, children's education, and the support of the elderly.

(XIX) Consolidate Talent Team Support. Continuously improve the setting of relevant disciplines and majors and training programs, strengthen industry-education integration, school-enterprise cooperation, and the combination of industry and education, and conduct "order-based" training of urgently needed service industry talents. Encourage ordinary universities, vocational schools, and enterprises to jointly build open regional industry-education integration practice centers, and cultivate compound, applied, and skilled service industry talents. Improve diversified evaluation methods for service industry personnel professional titles, occupational qualification evaluations, and occupational skill level certifications. Encourage local governments to issue talent catalogs and identification standards for "high-end, sophisticated, and urgently needed" talents in key areas of the service industry, and improve preferential policies for household registration, housing purchase, children's schooling, and spouse employment. Do a good job in the development of new service industry occupations and occupational standards. Carry out service recruitment season activities to expand the supply of talents.

(XX) Improve Statistical Monitoring Levels. Optimize the statistical monitoring methods for the service consumption market and improve the statistical monitoring system. Strengthen the collection and analysis and prediction of service consumption data, and do a good job in the statistics of service retail sales. Expand the sources of statistical monitoring data, increase cooperation with third-party payment platforms and research institutions, and explore the construction of suitable application models.

All regions, departments, and relevant units should resolutely implement the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, and promote the implementation of various tasks. The Ministry of Commerce should, together with relevant departments, give play to the coordinating role of the working mechanism for promoting the development of service consumption, strengthen overall planning, formulate special policies and measures, and jointly promote the high-quality development of service consumption.

State Council

July 29, 2024

(This document has been abridged)

Source: Chinese Government Website