“The domestic market offers strong backing for enterprises involved in foreign trade,” the Commerce Ministry said in a statement on Friday, citing a meeting in Beijing attended by Vice Minister Sheng Qiuping.
The nation needed to “give better play to the advantages of the super-large-scale market,” the ministry said, and also to “promote the combination of stabilizing foreign trade and expanding consumption.”
The meeting comes as major e-commerce platforms like JD.com, Alibaba Group Holding. and Tencent Holdings. announce programs aimed at helping exporters expand domestically. JD.com said it would buy no less than a ¥200 billion ($27.4 billion) worth of products from exporters to help them sell at home over the coming year.
Getting the nation’s consumers to pick up the slack from lost US business will likely be difficult to do. Business confidence and consumer sentiment remain wobbly in China, and a weak job market has many people worried about spending.
Also, excess capacity in some industries has fueled ruthless price competition, worsening deflationary pressures on the economy.Boost to service sector
China on Friday issued a plan to further open the country’s service sector, proposing to lift foreign equity ratio restrictions for app store services.
The plan expands the list of cities included in a pilot programme to open up the services sector and lays out tasks including promoting faster industrial application of AI , according to the document released by the commerce ministry.
China will further open its value-added telecommunications services and related digital services to foreign investors, and make efforts to open up the medical and health care sectors, the document added. The country will also allow financial institutions to expand the scope of their business, supporting multinational companies that invest or register locally to conduct cross-border centralised fund operations in yuan and stepping up the pilot scheme for the Qualified. Agencies
