Create and lead healthy consumption with high-quality supply

Key takeaways

Luo Xianju Xia Jiechang

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that people's health is an important symbol of national prosperity and national strength. Put the protection of people's health in the strategic position of priority development, and improve people's health promotion policies. The Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2023 emphasized that the implementation of policies to promote digital consumption, green consumption, and healthy consumption should be accelerated, and new consumption growth points such as smart homes, cultural and entertainment tourism, sports events, and domestic "trendy products" should be actively cultivated. The 2024 Government Work Report calls for comprehensive measures to stimulate consumption potential by increasing income, optimizing supply, and reducing restrictive measures. These arrangements provide guidance for deepening supply-side structural reform in the new era, promoting the steady growth of healthy consumption, and meeting the people's growing needs for a better life.

Grasp the new trends and characteristics of healthy consumption

Cultivating and expanding healthy consumption is essentially to strengthen the linkage between government, industry, academia and research based on the two focus points of the whole population and the whole life cycle in the process of comprehensively promoting the construction of a healthy China, promote the deep integration of health and elderly care, tourism, fitness and leisure, create a high-quality supply system of healthy consumer products and a healthy consumer service system covering the whole life cycle, better meet the people's growing needs for a better life, create and lead healthy consumption with high-quality supply, and promote the economy to achieve a virtuous cycle. According to the "Healthy China 2030" planning outline, by 2030, the mainland's institutional system for promoting national health will be more perfect, the total scale of the health industry will reach 16 trillion yuan, and the main health indicators will enter the ranks of high-income countries.

In recent years, with the upgrading of the consumption structure in mainland China and the improvement of residents' health awareness, the concept of healthy life has become the mainstream of society, and the development of healthy consumption has been accelerating, showing new trends and new characteristics.

First, the diversification of residents' health consumption demand is obvious. With the in-depth promotion of the "Healthy China" strategy and the steady improvement of residents' income levels, people's understanding of health has continued to develop and deepen, and the consumer demand for health products has changed from a single demand for medical services to diversified needs such as disease prevention, health promotion, and health rehabilitation, and the demand for health consumption has surged. According to the data, the health literacy level of mainland residents reached 27.78%, an increase of 18.3 percentage points over 2013. Among them, the health literacy level of urban residents was 31.94%, an increase of 18.14 percentage points, and the health literacy level of rural residents was 23.78%, an increase of 18.86 percentage points. The steady improvement of health literacy has promoted the transformation of the health management concept of urban and rural residents from focusing on "treating the disease" to focusing on "treating the disease", and the concept of health consumption has gradually changed from passive consumption to active consumption in the past, which is reflected in the consumption behavior of health examination, early disease screening, HPV vaccination and other health service consumption.

Second, healthy consumption is booming and has become a "new engine" for consumption. In view of the current development trend of diversification, personalization and obvious intergenerational differences in the field of health consumption, various regions in mainland China are accelerating product R&D and innovation, providing consumers with customized health products and services more accurately, and effectively releasing the potential of residents' health consumption. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the national per capita health care consumption expenditure will reach 2,460 yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 16.0%, accounting for 9.2% of the per capita consumption expenditure, an increase of 0.6 percentage points compared with the end of 2022. From the perspective of consumer products, health food, fitness equipment, medical beauty, elderly care services, smart wearables and other fields have the fastest growth.

With the high-quality supply of health business, we will ensure basic health consumption

The health cause undertakes the sacred mission of safeguarding and developing the health rights and interests of the people. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has always adhered to the strategic position of giving priority to the people's health from the strategic height of the overall development of the cause of the Party and the country, and has taken the protection of people's health as an important goal of our Party to strive for the people, and vigorously promoted the accelerated development of the mainland's health and health undertakings, and achieved remarkable results. At the same time, however, the shortcomings faced by the development of the mainland's health undertakings are still prominent, and there is still a gap between urban and rural residents in terms of medical and health resources, the quality and level of medical services, and the level of health, and there is still a gap between the situation and the people's growing needs for a better life.

In the process of promoting healthy consumption, we should continue to meet the growing health needs of the people as the fundamental starting point and foothold of health work, integrate health into all policy concepts, accelerate the construction of an integrated medical and health service system and a strong public health system, promote the balanced distribution and expansion of high-quality medical resources, weave a dense public health protection network, improve the accessibility of high-quality medical resources to the grassroots people, and ensure the basic health consumption needs of the people to see a doctor and pursue health and happiness. On the one hand, we should accelerate the improvement of the medical and health service system and promote the quality of health services. The medical and health service system bears the important function of safeguarding the life safety and health of the people. It is necessary to adhere to the people's health as the center, coordinate the promotion of family doctor contract services, medical associations, prevention and treatment and other work, expand the supply of high-quality medical resources, build a high-quality and efficient medical and health service system with Chinese characteristics, and promote the transformation of medical and health development mode to pay more attention to connotative development, service model to pay more attention to system continuity, management methods to pay more attention to scientific governance, and improve the overall capacity of the medical and health service system. On the other hand, we will strengthen digital empowerment and improve the accessibility of high-quality health services. In the era of digital economy, the key link for digital technology to empower the high-quality development of health care is to strengthen the application of big data, Internet of Things, medical robots, wearable IoT devices, VR, AR, metaverse and other technologies in disease prevention, medical treatment, health management and other scenarios, promote remote consultation, appointment referral, Internet follow-up, remote examination and other forms of health care services, and create a new model of online and offline integrated medical services. Comprehensively improve the modernization level of the health industry governance system and governance capacity in remote areas, so that patients can enjoy the real-time consultation services of hospital experts without leaving home, and continuously enhance the people's sense of access to medical treatment.

With the high-quality supply of the health industry, we will stimulate potential health consumption

The health industry is linked to people's livelihood and well-being, and economic development is linked to the other. In recent years, the huge development potential of the health industry has made local governments pay more and more attention to it, and many places have actively tapped their own health care resources and strived to develop the health industry into a new local economic growth point. The rapid development of the health industry in various regions has effectively improved the quality of health resource supply and effectively stimulated the demand for health consumption in emerging fields such as health food, leisure sports, health care, and smart wearables. In the process of promoting healthy consumption, we should take the initiative to adapt to the upgrading of the consumer market and the change of health concepts, accelerate the supply-side structural reform in the field of health, promote the organic connection between health undertakings and health industries, innovate and develop "Internet + health", biomedicine, high-end medical equipment manufacturing, etc., and establish a health industry system covering the whole life cycle, rich in connotation and optimized structure, so as to better meet the needs of urban and rural residents for healthy life consumption and diversified health products.

Specifically, it can be implemented through the following paths.

The first is to do the "special" health medicine and ingredient industry. Based on the advantages of the mainland's abundant resources of Chinese medicinal materials and special agricultural products, we will vigorously develop the health medicine and food ingredients industry supported by "food" to meet people's growing demand for pollution-free agricultural products, green food, organic agricultural products, dietary therapy and health products, food nutrition and other health foods.

The second is to strengthen the health manufacturing industry. Aiming at the international advanced technology level, in the direction of high-end, intelligent and specialized, we will continuously improve the policy system, accelerate the extension of the chain and strengthen the chain, strengthen the application of basic research and original and leading scientific and technological research, and promote the development of key industrial chains such as biological drugs, chemical drugs, modern Chinese medicine, and high-end medical devices, so as to effectively meet the needs of the people's health products.

The third is to do excellent health service industry. Actively develop high-quality health recuperation, health leisure and vacation products and services, vigorously develop health examination, health consultation, health care for the elderly, sports and fitness, beauty and health care and health tourism and other emerging health service formats, innovative service models, and effectively meet the multi-level and diversified health service needs of urban and rural residents.

Promote active health consumption with a high level of health literacy

Health literacy generally refers to an individual's ability to access and understand basic health information and services, and to use them and services to make sound decisions to maintain and promote their health. Improving the health literacy of the whole people can not only guide the public to establish a scientific concept of health and improve the level of health knowledge and skills of the public, but also enable the public to consciously and voluntarily adopt healthy lifestyles and behaviors, improve the public's ability to cope with and solve health problems, so that the public will not get sick, get sick less, and get sick later, so as to improve the health level of the whole society.

In the process of promoting healthy consumption, we should continue to improve the health literacy of residents as the starting point, solidly carry out the "health knowledge popularization action" and "health knowledge into 10,000 activities", establish and improve the health science expert database, health science resource library, health science knowledge release and dissemination mechanism, build a large alliance, large publicity pattern, focus on strengthening the "one old and one young" and other weak links in residents' health literacy, establish the health management concept of "everyone is the first person responsible for their own health", and steadily improve the safety and first aid literacy of urban and rural residents. Scientific health literacy, health information literacy, chronic disease prevention and treatment literacy, infectious disease prevention and treatment literacy, and basic medical literacy. At the same time, we will accelerate the construction of a good consumer promotion mechanism, actively cultivate a healthy and rational consumption concept, cultivate independent and self-disciplined healthy and civilized living habits, advocate a healthy consumption culture of abundance and thrift, build an important product traceability system covering online and offline, improve the quality of health products and services, promote the effective connection between supply and demand, and lead reasonable healthy consumption demand.

Unleash the potential of healthy consumption development with a better consumption environment

The consumption environment is an important factor affecting the growth of domestic consumption. In recent years, all regions and departments have given priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption, stimulated greater development momentum with a better consumption environment, and promoted the recovery of healthy consumption to run out of "acceleration", which has become a strong support for stable growth, expanding domestic demand, and building a new development pattern. According to the consumer satisfaction evaluation report of 100 cities released by the China Consumers Association, the comprehensive score of consumer satisfaction in 100 cities across the country in 2022 is 78.81 points, which is generally at a good level and exceeds the highest level before the epidemic.

In the process of promoting healthy consumption, on the one hand, we should fully consider the cross-industry, cross-class and cross-group characteristics of health consumption, strengthen departmental linkage, innovate the "illusion" and "chaos" supervision mechanism in health consumption publicity, strengthen the special governance of medical products, health care supplies, nutritional food, medical equipment, health care appliances, leisure and fitness, health management, health consulting and other industries, standardize the order of the health industry, and jointly build a healthy consumption environment for co-governance and sharing. On the other hand, we should give full play to the role of a reassuring and comfortable healthy consumption environment in tapping the potential of domestic demand and helping the high-quality development of the local economy, adhere to the focus on the demands of the masses, actively innovate the working mechanism of consumer rights protection, continuously expand the channels for consumer complaints, continue to promote the movement of consumer rights protection, and create a safe and comfortable healthy consumption environment, so that consumers dare to consume and are willing to consume, and further release the potential of the super-large-scale market.

(Luo Xianju is an assistant researcher at the Guizhou Provincial Academy of Social Sciences Think Tank for the Modernization of National Governance System and Governance Capacity; Xia Jiechang is a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Financial and Economic Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.