China economists urge Beijing to continue ramping up support for services consumption

For some context, Beijing's efforts to boost household consumption mostly covers subsidies for goods. However, local economists are of the view that while that is helpful, it's not enough as they need to also focus more on services consumption.

"You may not buy another television this year after you bought one last year, but the services industry is different. It has stickiness and it's not one-off. I have a specific suggestion that the subsidy scheme could expand to the services sector. This can be done right away." - Yan Se, deputy director of the Institute of Economic Policy and Peking University

"The service industry will be a main force of employment in the future. Even if we have achieved good results in the manufacturing sector today, we should be aware that what China needs is a strong and innovative manufacturing industry, not a manufacturing industry that accounts for a large share of GDP." - Chen Yuyu, director of the Institute of Economic Policy at Peking University

"When we talk about insufficient consumption, the key issue is the lack of services consumption. Goods consumption is more or less stable, but services consumption is directly related to the level of urbanisation." - Liu Shijin, former PBOC adviser