China's Xi urges demand‑driven growth in services sector
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Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the closing session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 12, 2026. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
BEIJING, April 8 (Reuters) - China's President Xi Jinping has called for a demand-driven approach coupled with reform and technological empowerment to develop the service sector, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
China will expand and upgrade the services sector, cultivate more "China service" brands and push production-oriented services toward specialisation and higher positions in the value chain, Xinhua quoted Xi as saying in a directive to a two-day national service industry conference in Beijing that began on Tuesday.
China will “emphasise demand-driven development, push forward reform breakthroughs, harness science and technology to drive growth, and expand openness and cooperation,” Xi said.
China should expand the supply of upgraded services and improve its consumption structure in line with demographic shifts to meet increasingly diverse consumer demand, Premier Li Qiang said at the meeting, according to Xinhua. He added that China should accelerate the growth of technology services by moving R&D and design toward greater specialisation and higher value‑added segments.
Beijing has been signalling a policy shift to focus on services this year as it tries to redirect some stimulus from sometimes-wasteful investments on transport, housing and industrial infrastructure to potentially more productive areas.
Soft consumer demand has hobbled the economy and Beijing's measures so far haven't turned it around. Per-capita services consumption was 46.1% in 2025, well below the 70% in the U.S.
China's new five-year plan pledged to "significantly" raise the share of household consumption in the economy over the next five years from around 40% at present, though it stopped short of setting a specific target.
(Reporting by Ethan Wang and Kevin Yao; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Kim Coghill)
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