Qinghai acts to further tap consumer potential

In July, Qinghai province released an implementation plan for 2019 and 2020 on improving systems and mechanisms for promoting consumption to further tap consumer potential.

1. Improving the quality of housing consumption. Qinghai will strive to develop the housing rental market and regulations will be launched for that purpose. Affordable housing that has been built but not sold can be used for leasing.

New commercial housing projects over 100,000 square meters in Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, should provide rental housing at the ratio of 3 percent of its total building area and the rental housing will be owned by the development enterprise.

A supervision and service platform for housing leasing and trading will be established as well as a complete real estate information release mechanism.

Construction and renovation for supporting infrastructure such as urban water supply, sewage and garbage treatment, heating supply, and adding elevators in old urban neighborhoods will be promoted.

2. Improving and upgrading automobile consumption. Preferential fiscal and tax policies for new energy automobiles will be further implemented to promote the application and use of new energy automobiles. Old vehicles will be replaced through measures such as economic compensation, restrictions on use and stringent regulations.

Reform of the national automobile circulation system will be implemented in Qinghai to develop a sharing, economical and socialized automobile circulation system which encourages brand diversification in automobile sales.

Strict supervision of automobile product quality will be applied and a quality accountability mechanism will be established.

Construction of parking lots in urban areas will be carried out and charging infrastructure for new energy vehicles will be installed. Qinghai will also actively apply to establish experiment units for parallel import of automobiles. Relevant industries such as car races and decorating will be developed to boost the aftermarket potential of the automobile industry.

3. Developing green consumption. The production of green consumption such as energy-saving and water-saving products, renewable products, environmental protection products, green building materials and new energy automobiles will be promoted. A series of evaluation rules will be introduced to establish a batch of green shopping malls which will promote green consumption.

Green packaging, such as green shopping bags, will be promoted to reduce the use of plastic bags. Qinghai will integrate internet and central kitchen models to create a green catering service system appealing to the masses and cultivate green restaurants. Environmental protection decoration material such as green building materials and water-based paint will be promoted for use in new buildings.

4. Further expanding and upgrading information consumption. Qinghai will accelerate its broadband construction and keep increasing network speed while reducing fees. The construction of commercial pilots for 5G technology will be accelerated.

Companies will be encouraged to set up online service platforms to meet needs between supply and demand. The province will develop digital consumption industries such as tele medicine, digital media, game animation and online education.

5. Promoting the innovative development of traditional business in the province. Regional business circles, distinctive commercial blocks and high-end commercial pedestrian streets will be constructed in commercial clusters in major cities such as Xining and Haidong to attract more high-end brands from outside Qinghai along with distinctive local brands.

Local brands and products will be further promoted to enhance their market competitiveness.

6. Upgrading rural consumption in Qinghai. Rural residents will be encouraged to increase consumption in transport and communication, entertainment and automobiles. Electronic commerce is expected to cover all rural areas in the province to promote online and offline circulation of agricultural and animal products. Qualified villages in Qinghai will be encouraged to integrate commercial logistics with other industries such as leisure agriculture, rural tourism and product processing to create demonstration industries in rural revitalization.

7. Boosting the high-quality development of tourism. Qinghai will make full use of its natural culture tourism brand value to keep promoting its reputation and influence in the tourism market. Tourism will be integrated with other industries including plateau ecological agriculture and animal husbandry, ethnic culture, characteristic industry, sports and health.

Qinghai will boost the market-oriented reform of tourism resources, cultivating and introducing large-scale tourism groups and building regional tourism economic cooperation mechanisms. Short tour rental services such as rental apartments, home inns and car rental will be promoted to boost tourism development. A paid leave system will be implemented and people will be encouraged to take off-peak leave and make use of flexible working schedules.

8. Increasing the supply of high-quality cultural services. Local culture such as Regong, Gesar and Tibetan cultures will be further developed, and traditional handicrafts will be protected. Qinghai will support the healthy development of the film and television culture industry and encourage the creation of documentaries, movies, TV series and internet dramas.

Emerging digital culture industries such as mobile multimedia, network video, digital publishing and cartoon games will see rapid growth in Qinghai. Various museums in the province will be encouraged to develop cultural and creative products in different ways according to their different conditions.

9. Cultivating competitive advantage of sports consumption in Qinghai. The province will make full use of sports events such as the Tour of Qinghai Lake International Road Cycling Race to push forward the development of the local sports industry. Financing institutions will be encouraged to cooperate with professional events to offer more support to develop more events and to launch more financial sports products. New forms of sports consumption such as winter, mountain and motor sports will also be developed.

10. Vigorously developing the health industry. Social capital will be encouraged to invest in resource-scarce fields such as rehabilitation nursing, hospice care, high-end medical treatment, oral cavity health and medical cosmetology. The province will further construct a primary medical service system and cultivate more general practitioners. The charging policy for online medical diagnosis and treatment will be improved and the fees will be gradually covered by medical insurance.

11. Vigorously developing the aged care industry. Qinghai will innovate to build a health and pension service system for the elderly. Over 70 percent of communities, villages and towns will be covered with standardized service facilities for the elderly by the end of 2020, while the percentage for administrative villages will be over 60 percent.

Medical Institutions will cooperate with nursing institutions for the aged to provide integrated pension care services including treatment hospitalization, rehabilitation nursing and hospice care. Commercial insurance companies will be encouraged to provide insurance products such as accidental injury and long-term care.

12. Increasing the supply of housekeeping services. Qinghai will improve the service standards and service specifications of housekeeping market and build an innovation platform integrating housekeeping and internet.

13. Promoting consumption on education and training. Social forces are being supported to set up education and training organizations catering to diverse educational needs and the comprehensive and healthy development of the individual's body and mind, releasing various educational service products such as learn-through-study tours, practicing camps and characteristic courses. Policies on care services for infants under three years old will be developed. Conditional areas are being encouraged to introduce high-quality overseas higher education and vocational education resources to jointly train talents and carry out research projects.

14. Strengthening the formulation of standards for consumer products and services. Standardization in the service industry is being carried out in areas such as tourism, traditional Chinese medicine, aged services, housekeeping and catering.

15. Improving the quality of consumer products. More efforts will be made in supervising the quality of consumer products and companies that fail to meet standards will be handled in accordance with law.

16. Building influential brands. A completed working mechanism featuring the use of trademarks, brand cultivation, development and protection will be established to cultivate a batch of local brands and industries with strong competitiveness and influence.

17. Improving the mechanism for sharing credit information in the consumer sector, completing databases for enterprise credit files and personnel files.

18. Making credit information more open. Information such as administrative licencing, administrative penalty and product sampling inspection results will be open up to the public. Information about consumer complaints will also be open to the public to urge market operators to maintain good faith.

19. Building a completed mechanism for encouraging people to keep their word and punishing those who break their word. Red and black lists will be established and will be open to the public. Green channels will be offered for companies on the red lists who keep good faith.

20. Pushing forward reform of the consumer rights protection mechanism. Contact stations for consumer rights protection will be set up in areas with intensive consumer behavior. False and illegal advertisement will be cracked down, especially in medicine, pharmacy, cosmetics and financial products.

21. Establishing and improving the post-consumption evaluation system, especially for food and pharmacy products to increase the safety, early warning monitoring, and emergency response.

22. Deepening reform of the income distribution system. The minimum wage standard in Qinghai will be gradually increased. A mechanism for the dynamic growth of basic pension standards for urban and rural residents will be put into operation and the level of basic medical care will be improved for urban and rural residences.

23. Building an open and fair market environment. Various measures such as shortening registration times for companies to encouraging more people to start business in Qinghai, and the province will gradually relax restrictions on foreign investment.

24. Improving supporting policies on fiscal, tax, and financial land use. Idle resources such as old factories, warehouses and commercial facilities will be used in areas such as healthcare, aged care, housekeeping, culture, tourism and sports in priority.

Preferential policies in personal income tax and tax revenue for life service industries such as healthcare, aged care and housekeeping will be implemented.

25. Carrying out reforms for public institutions. Public institutions in areas such as education, culture, health and sports will be reformed into companies with new management systems.

26. Improving the mechanism for investing in infrastructure construction in the consumer sector. Social capital will be further attracted in infrastructure construction in rural areas such as information networks and service consumption. Moreover, social capital is also being encouraged to take part in infrastructure construction in areas such as culture, tourism, sports, health, aged care, housekeeping and education through various measures, including public-private partnerships and special bonds for industrial enterprises in the social sector.

27. Strengthening statistical monitoring of consumption to effectively reflect the development level of goods and services consumption in Qinghai province. A third party will be invited to carry out evaluation on major consumption policies.

28. Promoting publicity and guidance on consumption policies. Mainstream media will be supported to carry out publicizing and reporting to better promote policies. Both online and offline platforms will be made full use of to let customers conduct scientific, rational and safe consumption.

*This English version is only for reference. To learn more, please refer to the authoritative Chinese version on qh.gov.cn.