A baby interacts the mascot of an expo in Fengjie, Chongqing municipality. (Photo/Xinhua)

A thorough review of 2019 will help us find out our starting point, our aims and our efforts for 2020. Over the last year, consumption in China presented the following highlights.

People have more money to buy

For Chinese wage earners, more money flew into their wallets in 2019 thanks to the implementation of special additional deductions for individual income tax.

Starting January 2019, tax breaks surpassed 442.6 billion yuan following reforms in individual income tax, benefiting 250 million tax payers.

The purpose of the reforms is to create more benefits for the people by increasing their incomes, said Li Quan, a resident in the city of Nanyang in central China’s Henan province.

Everyone contributes to consumption growth

According to the 4th national economic census of China, by the end of 2018, China had 6.5 million wholesale and retail enterprises, an increase of 131.2 percent from 2013. More than 40 million people were involved in the industry, up 20.9 percent from 2013. Five years on, China has cultivated more consumer service providers.

The retail sector, medicine and medical instruments retailing in particular, expanded rapidly, followed by textiles, clothing and household objects retailing, and food, beverage and cigarette retailing. By the end of 2018, the country had 2.1 million culture companies.

5G makes faster network services a reality

In 2019, the country issued 5G licenses for commercial use to its three major operators: China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom. According to statistics by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, by the end of November 2019, more than 5 million 5G cell phones were sold.

The statistics also indicated that in 2020, 5G-backed technologies and services could result in a direct market value of about 484 billion yuan. The figure is expected to break 3.3 trillion yuan by 2025, and 6.3 trillion yuan by 2030.

Cross-industry collaboration revitalizes homemade products

According to statistics released by Tmall, an online marketplace in China, during the “Double 11” shopping festival in November 2019, the platform saw 15 brands achieving sales volumes of more than 1 billion yuan, and seven of the brands were Chinese.

Behind the eye-catching figures were the efforts of domestic brands that were active in collaborating with each other to produce innovative and high-quality products, as well as the strong demand from the younger generations for these innovative products.

New markets on the rise

A new phenomenon has emerged: smaller cities and townships are becoming hot destinations for both offline and online businesses.

Suning.com, a major pioneer in online and offline retailing, has opened more than 4,400 retail cloud stores across the country.

According to Ministry of Commerce statistics, 70 percent of newly-registered users of e-commerce platforms were from China’s third- and fourth- tier cities and towns, and 60 percent of orders on home appliances, and beauty and furniture products were placed by buyers from emerging markets, during the “Double 11” shopping festival of 2019.

People’s cultural activities become diversified

Last year, cultural consumption saw explosive growth in China, represented by “red-themed” tourist activities and rising box office revenues.

The year 2019 marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. As part of the celebrations, Chinese people made an increasing number of trips to places such as Beijing, Yan’an, Jiaxing, Jinggangshan, Zunyi and Nanjing.

In the first three quarters of 2019, Chinese tourists made 4.6 billion trips in the country, a year-on-year increase of 8.8 percent, and nearly 120 million trips out of the country, a year-on-year increase of 8.5 percent.

According to statistics, by Dec. 23, 2019, the total box office revenue of cinemas nationwide had exceeded 62.7 billion yuan and 8,843 screens were newly added, pushing the total number of screens in cinemas to 68,922.