Residents enjoy food at Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou Province on Friday.  China will work to improve the consumption of domestic residents and support the recovery and development of the consumer service sectors, according to a government work report submitted to the national legislature for deliberation on Friday. Photo:cnsphoto

Suggestions for boosting domestic demand are expected to be a major focus of brainstorming during China's forthcoming annual two sessions.

With the Chinese economy continuing to roar back in 2021 from the COVID-19 pandemic, consumption - a weak link during the outbreak last year - is expected to transform into a growth booster, starting the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) on a strong note, economists said.

In an interview with the CPPCC Daily last month, Tu Guangshao, former vice mayor of Shanghai and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said that domestic demand ought to play its basic role in fostering internal circulation, which means making plans to attach strategic importance to consumption.

Tu urged attention be given to China's income structure, saying that the gap in earnings from stock investment, houses and other family properties is widening, with some investment-savvy people seeing a rapid growth in such income while those less adept at investing witnessing slow or zero growth.

Over the 14th Five-Year Plan period, a consumption upgrade is meant to get more attention. There are expected to be new sources of consumption in the spheres of education, healthcare, culture and information consumption, the political advisor stated.

Market regulators, while punishing unlawful activities and handling consumer complaints, should also actively guide those involved to resort to dispute settlement, pushing for disputes in the consumption arena to be resolved fundamentally, the People's Daily reported on Monday, citing Li Li, chief of the case filing division of the Fangshan District People's Court in Beijing.

Frequent consumer lawsuits are mostly caused by ill-regulated and illegitimate operations. Most of these disputes were initially not serious and could have been rectified in an easier manner, according to Li, also a deputy to the National People's Congress.

Consumption-related proposals and motions to be submitted at the two sessions starting on Thursday build on strong calls for boosting domestic demand and unlocking consumption potential.

Judging by China's electricity consumption and trade figures reported by other economies for the first two months, there's a strong expectation for the economy to grow by more than 13 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, Tian Yun, vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, told the Global Times on Monday.

The stay-put policy implemented over the weeklong Spring Festival holidays ensured the delivery of orders, steadying the economy on the supply side, Tian said.

If there's stellar first-quarter growth and mass COVID-19 vaccinations go as planned in the next two quarters, then consumption, an economic laggard last year, would post substantially better growth compared with last year.

Retail sales contracted 3.9 percent year-on-year in 2020, as a consequence of the prolonged coronavirus outbreak.

In a research note sent to the Global Times, Nomura economists led by Lu Ting estimated that retail sales growth likely surged to 32 percent year-on-year in January-February from 4.6 percent in December, citing an extremely low base and global oil price hikes.