[News Essay]
At the beginning of the new year, consumers ushered in another round of policy "red envelopes": purchase of three-category digital products with mobile phones, tablets, and smart watches (bracelets) can enjoy new subsidies; the old-for-new subsidy products for home appliances increased from category 8 last year to category 12; fuel vehicles that meet the conditions for National IV emission standards are included in the scope of scrapping and renewal subsidy...
Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and other departments have issued a number of documents clarifying the product scope and subsidy standards for consumer goods for the new year. The subsidy discounts of real money, coupled with the concentrated release of consumer demand around the festival, help the consumer market continue to heat up the beginning of the year.
Since the implementation of the "two new" policy in March last year, the exchange of old products for consumer goods has driven a significant recovery in sales in industries such as automobiles and home appliances. The latest data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that driven by the old-for-new policy, the sales of related products exceeded 1.3 trillion yuan in 2024, which increased the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods by about 1 percentage point. The two-way efforts of policies and markets have played an important role in stabilizing the consumption market and smoothing the economic cycle.
On the shopping list, the car is replaced with "energy", home appliances are replaced with "intelligent", and home decoration, kitchen and bathroom are “renewed". While boosting residents' willingness to consume, the policy of exchanging old has also shown great traction in promoting industrial upgrading and accelerating green transformation. Data shows that last year, more than 6.6 million old cars were updated to new energy vehicles or energy-saving cars. The sales of first-level energy-efficient products in the exchange of home appliances for new products accounted for more than 90%, and nearly 10 million smart home products such as smart toilets, sweeping robots, and smart door locks were replaced. High-tech, high-efficiency and high-quality consumer goods supported by the policy have entered thousands of households, allowing more people to enjoy a safe, convenient and comfortable quality life. The new market space and new consumption concepts that have been "changed" have become a source of confidence to encourage enterprises to turn to new things and green.
Commercial products for old-for-new products are both beneficial to the present and the long-term. Timely continuation and expansion of the scope are conducive to stabilizing consumer and corporate expectations, further releasing consumption potential, and optimizing the market supply structure. This year, the subsidy for home appliances for old-for-new products has been extended from products that are urgently needed to products of quality demand, and new varieties such as water purifiers and dishwashers have been added. Combined with the independent subsidy support for emerging home appliances and small home appliances from various places, personalized and diversified improvement consumer demand will be better met. This time, the inclusion of consumer electronic products such as mobile phones and tablets into the subsidy scope has also attracted market attention. The consumer electronics industry chain is long and the product iteration and update quickly will form a wider pulling effect and convey the warmth of policies to more upstream and downstream industries.
Take consumer electronic products as an example, according to data released by e-commerce platforms, on January 20, the first day of the new subsidy for digital product purchases was launched, the sales of mobile phones, tablets, and smart children's watches all showed a significant month-on-month increase. Judging from the hot-selling price range, mid-range products that take into account functions and cost-effectiveness and position the public's needs are particularly favored. Today, consumer electronic products have entered a new round of innovation cycle, and the increased support of consumption policies is expected to accelerate the large-scale application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and performance materials. Therefore, for participants in market competition, it is better to seize this rare opportunity to get out of the homogeneous competition of "volume parameters", "volume configuration" and "volume low price", return to user experience, strengthen R&D and design, and use policy benefits to strengthen products and improve services, so as to achieve longer-term development.
From the deployment of the Central Economic Work Conference to increase efforts to expand the implementation of the "two new" policies, to the release of implementation plans and subsidy rules, and to the arrival of subsidy products into consumers, the rapid implementation of incremental policies fully demonstrates the current efforts and determination of government departments to boost consumption and expand domestic demand. In the next step, to better play the policy leverage effect, we must focus on the problems reported by consumers and enterprises to promptly clear the bottlenecks and card points, optimize the subsidy application and review process, strengthen supervision of violations such as "raising prices first and subsidies" and fraud and subsidy subsidies to ensure that consumers' sense of gain is not discounted.
(Author: Zhao Jianing)
