New policies to boost consumer confidence

To stimulate market vitality and promote stable and healthy economic and social development, Qingdao, a coastal city in East China's Shandong province, recently formulated several new policies to increase consumer confidence and expand consumption.

The policies cover 50 specific measures in four aspects: stabilizing bulk consumption, expanding service consumption, optimizing market environment and enhancing consumption capacity.

Stable consumption

The city has proposed 14 measures to spur consumption in areas such as automobiles, household appliances and housing. Zhang Yuanming, deputy director of the Qingdao development and reform commission, said the construction of a reasonable, scientific and efficient charging infrastructure system is an important guarantee for promoting the consumption of new energy vehicles.

"We insist on overall planning, moderate advancement with an emphasis on construction and management, and accelerating the construction of charging infrastructure," Zhang said.

From January to August, a total of 13,604 charging piles were put into operation in the city, consisting of 2,258 public charging piles, 885 dedicated charging piles and 10,461 private charging piles. As of the end of August, Qingdao has installed a total of 53,706 charging piles — 13,758 public charging piles, 6,190 dedicated charging piles, and 33,758 private charging piles.

Other favorable policies in the auto sector include implementing the national policy of optimizing tax reduction and exemption for purchases of new energy vehicles and encouraging financial institutions to launch automobile consumption credit.

Qingdao has also issued 10 million yuan ($1.37 million) in household appliance consumption vouchers, carried out promotional activities for the replacement of old appliances with new ones, and provided subsidies for businesses involved in consumption activities in towns and markets at or below the subdistrict level.

For housing consumption, the measures include implementing the "transfer with mortgage" for second-hand housing, adjusting the down payment ratio for first-home and second-home loans to 20 percent and 30 percent respectively, and extending the policy of extracting housing provident funds for down payments for direct relatives until the end of August 2024.

Zhang Xiao, director of the Qingdao real estate development center, said that through institutional innovation, residents can transfer existing houses without having to repay the loans.

"While ensuring the security of transaction funds, it reduces the financial troubles of the sellers in raising funds and provides more choices for both buyers and sellers, significantly reducing transaction costs and greatly improving the convenience of housing stock transactions," he said.

Expanded services

Qingdao is ramping up efforts to invigorate the market in sectors such as commerce, cultural tourism, sports and care for the elderly, with 22 newly launched policies.

Wang Zhigang, deputy director of the Qingdao commerce bureau, said the priority is to restore and expand consumption, enhance capacity and innovate scenarios. Since the beginning of the year, the city has issued a total of 139 million yuan in consumer vouchers for automobiles, retail, catering and household appliances, driving consumption of more than 4 billion yuan.

To expand cultural tourism consumption, Qingdao has launched key measures such as developing the nighttime economy; providing rewards to hotel investment entities that meet the conditions for expanding operations; supporting high-quality development of cruise tourism; and providing rewards and subsidies for large-scale performances and music festivals.

Guo Shuang, deputy director of the Qingdao culture and tourism bureau, said that in the first three quarters, the city has demonstrated a strong recovery in the cultural tourism market and consumption. "We have focused on the entire chain of eating, accommodation, travel, shopping and entertainment, and aimed to ensure that citizens, tourists and friends can have a comfortable experience in Qingdao. Next, we will stimulate the vitality of cultural tourism consumption in an all-around way," Guo said.

Optimized environment

Qingdao has also launched a series of measures to optimize its consumption environment, including making use of central government funds to support construction of county-level logistics distribution centers; cracking down on infringements, counterfeits and failure to comply with price labeling regulations in accordance with the law; and creating a reassuring and high-quality consumer environment.