Chinese consumers opted for high quality and diverse choices even as prices stayed stable during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, which shows that domestic demand still has huge potential and talk of a "consumption downgrade" is inaccurate, analysts said.
Consumption in Beijing's gift market showed a trend toward upgrading during the just-concluded vacation, as the Global Times learned during visits to several supermarkets in different districts of the capital.
"Consumers pay more attention to high-quality, healthy products now," a manager of a big supermarket in Beijing said. "High-end food is quite popular."
"The taste of China's consumers has been upgraded and diversified, which means that China's domestic demand has huge potential," said Yuan Fuhua, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, on Tuesday.
The much-hyped "consumption downgrade" is just a biased and exaggerated description, although the spending power has indeed been limited by some inflated asset prices, Yuan told the Global Times.
As the amount of consumption showed a small increase during the holiday, the supply of staple and non-staple foods was sufficient. Further, average vegetable prices during the production peak season in the fall are expected to decline, figures from the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce showed.
The consumption market is expected to maintain a stable development trend, said Gao Feng, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, at a press briefing on Thursday.
China initiated a Level 2 emergency response mechanism to keep consumer prices stable to offset the negative effects of typhoons, Gao said.
"A rising living standard is a core indicator of modernization, and the core indicator of economic structural upgrading is consumers getting choosier and more demanding. The taste of Chinese consumers is showing this trend. China has indeed reached the stage of formulating consumption standards so as to promote transformation as well as innovation and development," Yuan said.
However, Yuan said that rising short-term consumption during the Mid-Autumn Festival is not the same thing as a real consumption upgrade. The consumption structure must improve, and spending on science, education, culture and health sectors must increase, especially education, Yuan added.
