Stories of High-Quality Development | Zhang Zhanbin: Expanding domestic demand on all fronts requires fully mobilizing 'four key enthusiasms'

The Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2024 listed expanding domestic demand on all fronts as the first key task for the Chinese economy in 2025, emphasizing that efforts should be made to vigorously boost consumption, improve investment efficiency, and expand domestic demand on all fronts. This fully demonstrates the great importance the Party and the country have placed on expanding domestic demand and China's firm determination to achieve it.

Expanding domestic demand on all fronts requires us to fully mobilize "four key enthusiasms," said Zhang Zhanbin, director of the Chinese Modernization Research Center and professor of the School of Marxism, the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee (National Academy of Governance), in "Stories of High-Quality Development", a People's Daily's video series.

First, efforts should be made to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the general public. Boosting consumption is an important aspect of expanding domestic demand. The most fundamental approach is to promote employment, improve social security, and optimize income distribution structures, especially by increasing income and reducing burdens for middle and low-income groups, thereby enhancing their consumption capacity, willingness, and level.

He believes that expanding consumption should be combined with improving the quality of people's lives, innovating diversified consumption scenarios, and expanding service consumption. It is also essential to actively develop new consumption models and new business formats such as the debut economy, ice and snow economy, and silver economy. Together this approach aims to cultivate new growth points for domestic demand through providing high-quality supply and continuously releasing consumption potential.

Second, we must fully mobilize the enthusiasm of various business entities, especially private enterprises. He said efforts should be made to optimize the development environment for the private economy, increase policy support for the private economy, strengthen the legal guarantee for the development of the private economy, promote the healthy growth of the private economy, continue to create a social atmosphere that cares about and promotes the development and growth of the private economy, and strive to promote the high-quality development of the private economy.

Third, we must fully mobilize the enthusiasm of capital markets. We must stimulate investment and financing enthusiasm across all sectors to promote market vitality, promote listed companies to continuously create profits, strengthen investors' long-term investment confidence, and cultivate more patient and long-term capital.

Zhang said that we should keep improving investment policy tools, strive to expand effective investment, leverage the multiplier effect of government investment, and guide social capital to support weak areas. We must also address shortcomings, enhance momentum, and promote economic growth and structural optimization.

Fourth, we must fully mobilize the enthusiasm of officials. On one hand, we should optimize assessment mechanisms, design reasonable evaluation indicators, and provide necessary top-level guidance to fully unleash the governance effectiveness of expanding domestic demand. On the other hand, we should establish and improve incentive and error-tolerance mechanisms, and promote the implementation of landmark reform measures in practice. This will effectively alleviate worries about evaluation in local areas and at the grassroots level, effectively reduce burdens at the grassroots level, and enable capable and willing officials to work effectively and achieve results.

"Expanding domestic demand on all fronts is not only a key link in building a new development pattern but also an important foundation for promoting high-quality development and a necessary condition for achieving Chinese modernization. We must fully recognize that this is not a 'temporary measure,' but a long-term strategic initiative," said Zhang.