If it is true China has fully shaken off the economic downturn, consumption deserves much of the credit.

Retail sales for consumer goods in November 2009 increased 15.8 percent from a year earlier, a sign that consumers are stepping up to fill in the gap left by plummeting exports.

Nevertheless, long-term prospects for the sector may be less promising. Governments and enterprises purchase contributes 66 percent of the increases in retail sales, while households account for the remaining 34 percent, said the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in a December report. The finds are evidence that households are still unwilling to relax their austerity.

For decades, thrift has entrenched itself as a common value as Chinese residents save for the future. The recent economic recovery and stock market gains might make savings somewhat less urgent, but will not simply eliminate the desire to save altogether.

Since repairing the social safety net will be a protracted effort, the job of spurring consumption has been placed mostly in the hands of powerful policy stimulus measures, which have sparked a housing and automobile buying rush.

But after purchasing a car or home, consumers are likely to become even more hesitant toward daily consumption as they may have mortgages and other bills to pay, said Huang Yasheng, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview with the Beijing-based Global Entrepreneur magazine.

"It is imperative for policymakers to replace the temporary stimulus with more permanent incentives, such as wage growth and reforms to the health care and pension systems," Huang said.