[The Two Sessions "Go Deeper"] Innovate high-quality service supply and activate consumption potential
(Source: Guangming.com-Theory Channel 2026-03-06）
Author: Hua Ying (researcher at the Beijing Institute of Opening up, w88 casino, professor at the w88 casino of International Economics and w88, doctoral supervisor); Guo Kexin (doctoral student at the w88 casino of International Economics and w88, w88 casino)
The 2026 Government Work Report (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") places "strengthening the construction of a strong domestic market" at the top of the key tasks, and makes systematic arrangements for "in-depth implementation of special actions to boost consumption" and "expanding capacity and improving the quality of the service industry." In 2025, my country's service consumption expenditure will account for 46.1% of residents' per capita consumption expenditure, and the growth rate will continue to be ahead of commodity consumption, marking that China's economy is moving from a commodity-dominated to a service-driven economy. The growth of service consumption is by no means a simple scale expansion. Its core lies in deepening the supply-side structural reform, promoting the supply system to achieve a profound transition from providing standardized "functions" to creating embodied "meaningful experiences", stimulating new demands through value creation, and building lasting endogenous power for high-quality development.
Demand transition: from “functional possession” to “meaningful experience”
Currently, the core logic driving consumption is changing. The key to consumption decision-making has shifted from measuring the function and price of goods to pursuing the meaningful experience, emotional connection and identity carried by services. Its deep motivation stems from the evolution of the social relationship structure: traditional geographical and professional ties are weakening, and individual identity and emotional belonging increasingly rely on self-constructed interest communities and value resonance. This marks that the core value of consumption is shifting from the "instrumental rationality" of the industrial era to the "meaning rationality" of the digital era.
The consumption landscape has also undergone profound changes as a result. The main consumers, represented by young people and emerging middle-income groups, have shown a compound logic of "cost-effectiveness" and "meaningful investment" that coexist. The measurement standard has been upgraded from "price-performance ratio" to "price-performance ratio, emotion-price ratio" - the willingness to pay a premium for psychological satisfaction and sense of meaning. The pursuit of emotional value is evolving from the immediate happiness of "pleasing oneself" to the long-term healing and ability building of "healing oneself". Consumers are increasingly seeking in-depth services that can provide emotional management and psychological nourishment, and invest in the enrichment of personality through consumption. This consumption pattern with emotion as the new core is deeply intertwined with the healing economy, experience economy, and self-pleasure economy, creating a new consumption scenario of "emotional and experiential services". At the same time, the value discovery of "ordinary narratives" is gradually emerging, consumers are drawing more healing power from daily life, and the paths to satisfy emotional needs are becoming more fragmented and decentralized.
However, the profound evolution of the demand side reflects the "value lag" of the supply side. There is still a large number of shallow and homogeneous "instrumental" supply in the market - many "national trend" products remain in the pile of symbols, and cultural tourism projects fall into "template" copying. The root cause is that supply thinking still remains at the level of standardized "functions" and fails to discern that what consumers really need is "meaningful scenes" that can place their emotions and confirm themselves. This structural dislocation reflects the core problem of "supply failing to meet demand" in the service industry pointed out in the "Report", and also points to the urgent need for "capacity expansion-quality improvement" reforms.
Paradigm revolution: from “regulating demand” to “leading value”
Faced with the profound shift in demand towards "meaningful experience", although traditional policy tools represented by consumer coupons and subsidies can stimulate existing demand in the short term, they are unable to solve the fundamental contradiction of scarcity of high-quality supply. When consumers are willing to pay a "price-to-heart" premium for emotional recognition, the key to growth is no longer the purchasing power itself, but whether the market can provide sufficiently scarce "meaning carriers" and "value prototypes."
The "Report" proposes to "stimulate the endogenous motivation of residents' consumption and promote consumption policies simultaneously". The key to "stimulating the endogenous motivation of residents' consumption" is to cultivate new growth points through "addition" on the one hand, and to break down consumption barriers through "division" on the other hand - this is the core of the shift from "regulating demand" to "leading value". The former aims to optimize the efficiency of realizing existing demand, while the latter uses forward-looking insights into the evolution of social emotions and cultural identity to activate and even define new consumption possibilities with innovative supply.
The profoundness of this change is that it requires the policy focus to shift from cyclical demand-side regulation to building an ecosystem that can stimulate sustained "value innovation." The central function of the policy should shift to reducing institutional costs and providing an inclusive environment for meaning creation activities. By stimulating systematic innovation on the supply side in emotional, spiritual and other dimensions, a steady stream of new services and new scenarios that meet people's yearning for a better life can be hatched, thereby opening up a more resilient growth channel driven by meaningful consumption.
Supply innovation: building a new supply system that is “scenario-based, integrated, and digital”
The key to transforming "leading value" into growth reality is to promote the supply system to complete a profound transformation from providing "tools" to creating "experiences", and to carry out systematic innovation through the three paths of scenarioization, integration and digitalization. With the core of meaning value, integration realizes value delivery, and digitalization provides the underlying support for value innovation. With "expanding capacity and improving quality" as the core, the strategic deployment of the development of the service industry in the "Report" is transformed into an operable action plan, and systematically opens up new growth space for service consumption.
Scenario-based supply: from function delivery to meaning anchor. The core of scenario-based supply is to reshape services from the function of solving specific problems into an experience carrying emotional narrative and value recognition. This requires the supplier to transform universal social emotions (such as the desire for belonging, healing, and cultural confidence) into an immersive and perceptible consumption scene. For example, in the field of transportation services, relying on the high-speed rail network to create a "mobile cultural living room" makes the journey itself a consumption scene that integrates regional display and light social interaction; in the field of home management and elderly care services, the "smart elderly care butler" model integrates health monitoring, life care and emotional companionship, and reshapes scattered services into warm and integrated care solutions. These are new consumption scenarios that echo the "Promote the high-quality, diversified and convenient development of the lifestyle service industry" proposed by the "Report", and are also a specific response from the supply side to consumers' yearning for a better life.
Integrated supply: from business format overlay to value network. The "Report" proposes "deepening the pilot integration development of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries" and "supports the application of artificial intelligence in information technology services, human resources services, cultural tourism, sports and business integration" as one of the key policy initiatives. Integrated development aims to break industrial boundaries and build a "dynamic value network" centered on consumers' personalized journeys. Through the systematic integration of elements such as "cultural, commercial, travel and sports exhibitions", a composite consumption ecology is formed and the multiplier effect of integration-driven value creation is activated. For example, in the field of automobile aftermarket and travel services, camping bases, intangible cultural heritage workshops, outdoor guides and special accommodations can be linked in real time based on user preferences to generate a "one-stop" themed adventure plan; in the field of sports events and performance services, around the "emotional tipping point" of IP, supporting chain services such as accommodation, catering, and cultural creativity can be systematically designed to convert instantaneous flow of people into sustained consumption.
Digital supply: from efficiency tool to innovation base. The core of digital supply is not the online migration of services, but the exploration of the depth of experience and the expansion of service boundaries through technological empowerment, enabling the supply side to move from "process improvement" to "model innovation" and continue to expand the boundaries and connotations of consumption. By reducing the cost of trial and error, providing real-time feedback and flexible response, new service models that were unimaginable in the past were born. In the field of online audiovisuals, AIGC is promoting the shift of content from one-way communication to "interactive and companionable" emotional carriers, and is promoting the creation of immersive healing content that meets the needs of "healing oneself".
Institutional cornerstone: building a governance ecosystem that supports value innovation
The new supply system cannot go from blueprint to implementation without adequate institutional guarantees. This requires leading by the spirit of "deepening reform" and "innovation-driven", focusing on breaking down barriers and strengthening empowerment, building a full-cycle governance ecosystem that effectively reduces institutional transaction costs and stimulates value innovation, and solidifies the strategic path of "creating new demand with new supply" into sustainable institutional advantages, injecting lasting power into high-quality development.
Inclusive and prudential regulatory framework: Provide space for trial and error of new models. In the face of new service forms such as emotional healing and AI companionship, it is necessary to actively explore flexible mechanisms such as "regulatory sandbox" and pilot registration, provide room for trial and error on the premise of delineating safety and ethical bottom lines, and accelerate the development of quality and data standards that are adapted to emerging scenarios. In accordance with the "orderly relaxation of service industry access restrictions" proposed in the "Report", reforms will be used to break down hidden barriers and provide compliance channels for innovation.
Transparent and reliable credit and standards system: building the cornerstone of trust for service consumption. The intangibility of services makes trust the core of transactions. It is necessary to establish and improve service commitment disclosure and dynamic credit evaluation mechanisms covering the fields of housekeeping, elderly care, culture and tourism, etc., fully integrate contract performance information into the public credit platform, transform "experience uncertainty" into transparent "credit assets", strengthen the protection of consumer rights and interests, and make people dare to consume and be willing to consume.
Precision-oriented element support: nourishing the growth ecology of innovative models. The allocation of factors should shift from "subsidy subjects" to "incentive scenarios". Fiscal and financial support focuses on reducing the initial risks of the incubation of new scenarios and new business formats, making good use of the newly established 100 billion yuan special fund for fiscal and financial collaboration to promote domestic demand, and activating market vitality with a multiplier effect. In terms of talent training, we will accelerate the identification of new occupations such as "experience designers" and "digital scene planning", deepen the integration of industry and education to cultivate cross-border talents, and provide a source of vitality for the service industry to "expand capacity and improve quality".
Attachment: Original report link
