China's services consumption market gains momentum

Photo shows the Tonglu service area on the G25 Changchun-Shenzhen expressway in east China's Zhejiang Province. (Xinhua/Jiang Han)

China's retail sales of services rose 5.3 percent year on year in the first half of 2026, 4.2 percentage points faster than the growth in retail sales of goods, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

An NBS official said services consumption has become an important driver of expanding consumption, as household spending shifts from being dominated by goods toward a more balanced focus on both goods and services.

Wang Quanzhong, director of the NBS Department of Trade and External Economic Relations Statistics, said the combined effects of various policies to boost consumption have continued to take hold this year, driving further expansion of the consumer market and strong growth in service retail.

Retail sales of communication and information services maintained relatively rapid growth in the first half of the year, Wang said.

During the same period, retail sales of tourism-related consulting and rental services, as well as cultural and recreational services, recorded double-digit growth, rising 11.3 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively.

In early July, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism launched a national summer holiday cultural and tourism consumption campaign. The campaign will feature more than 30,000 cultural and tourism consumption activities nationwide and provide over 450 million yuan ($66 million) in consumption subsidies, catering to popular interests such as summer getaways, parent-child study tours and nighttime cultural tourism.

In the first half of the year, online service retail sales increased 6 percent year on year, 0.7 percentage point higher than overall service retail growth. Livestreaming e-commerce retail sales exceeded 1 trillion yuan, up 6.5 percent.

Wang said retail businesses are actively advancing digital and integrated transformation to better meet consumers' diverse needs.

New forms of consumption are also expanding rapidly. This summer, immersive and experiential consumption has become an important driver of cultural and tourism spending in many regions.

Mao Shengyong, deputy head of the NBS, said data showed that revenue from theatrical performances and museum-related activities grew 28.3 percent and 24.6 percent, respectively, in the first half of the year.

Inbound consumption has remained strong. China has optimized visa-free entry policies while improving supporting services such as departure tax refunds, making travel and shopping more convenient for foreign visitors. In the first half of the year, China recorded 17.82 million inbound trips under visa-free entry policies, up 30.6 percent year on year.

The continued vitality of service consumption reflects the steady performance of the broader service sector.

Wang Guanhua, spokesperson for the NBS, said the service sector has maintained steady growth and played an important role in supporting industrial upgrading and improving people's well-being. In the first half of the year, the added value of the service sector reached 41.4 trillion yuan, up 5.2 percent year on year, half a percentage point faster than overall economic growth.

China has continued to open up its service sector.

"In recent years, China has promoted deeper opening up in key service areas, including tourism, transportation, finance and telecommunications. From January to May, China's trade in services expanded 6 percent year on year, while the service trade deficit narrowed by about 20 percent," Wang Guanhua said.

Exports of high-tech and high-value-added services have become increasingly competitive, with knowledge-intensive service exports growing 12.2 percent.