Last year, China's total retail sales of consumer goods reached 38.1 trillion yuan ($5.7 trillion), maintaining steady development. The contribution rate of final consumption expenditure to economic growth reached 76.2 percent, an increase of 18.6 percentage points over the same period when compared to the previous year. It has become the driving force of economic growth for five consecutive years.

Over the past 40 years, consumption has transformed from traditional commodity to service; meanwhile, the consumer demand gradually transferred to differentiation, individualization and diversification from imitation, homogenization, simplification.

This has provided a continuous and reliable driving force for economic development with an enhanced and defined structure. This highlights the positive changes in China's economic indicators and internal structure, and also reflects the changes in quality taking place in China's economy.

China's consumer market faced pressure last year. But the decline in the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods mainly obeys a law that the proportion of physical consumption can decrease and its growth rate can slow down during the process of consumption structure optimization. China's service consumption accounted for 49.5 percent of total consumer spending in the last year which was not reflected in the total retail sales of consumer goods.

The population of China will offer huge purchasing power for the consumer market. In addition, the country's consumption culture has the potential to support high-quality economic development.

(This is an edited excerpt of an article originally published in People.cn on February 25)