International business leaders at the ongoing 2025 China Development Forum (CDF) have underscored the willingness to expand their presence in China, highlighting the country's market attractiveness and growth potential.
The two-day CDF opened in Beijing on Sunday, under the theme "Unleashing Development Momentum for Stable Growth of Global Economy", attracting over 100 foreign guests, including 86 official representatives of multinational companies from 21 countries.
Oliver Zipse, CEO of German carmaker BMW, praised China's comprehensive approach to new energy vehicle (NEV) development, stressing that his company seeks to get involved.
"I think the NEV policy in China here -- consisting, perhaps, of long-range plug-in hybrids, range extenders and also hydrogen -- is, I think, the best whole set-up for developing the NEV policy. BMW sold last year 100,000 NEV vehicles here in China. So we are participating in the market. And at the end of this year, we will introduce our new platform, it's called the Neue Klasse. It's a pure electric car, which is partially developed here in China, and we're looking forward to that," he said.
Shane Tedjarati, vice chairman of Prologis Global, a world-leading industrial real estate company headquartered in San Francisco, also spoke highly of China's role in global supply chains.
"Obviously a lot of global companies are in China and we serve them globally everywhere and we want to serve them seamlessly here. Increasingly, China's consumer economy is growing, so a lot of Chinese companies have their supply chain needs and we help them with their supply chain needs here," he said.
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China will continuously build a robust domestic market to bolster its economy and counter external challenges in accordance with the requirements and arrangement from the annual Central Economic Work Conference, which put domestic demand at the forefront of eight key tasks for next year's economic work, according to experts.
The tone-setting conference was held in Beijing from Wednesday to Thursday in which the Chinese leadership decided priorities for the economic work in 2026.
Over the past four years, domestic demand has contributed an average of 86.4 percent to China's economic growth, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner.
"The top priority is to expand domestic demand as the key reason for this is that our demand is relatively weak. The first step here is figuring out how to increase consumption," said Chen Binkai, vice president of Central University of Finance and Economics.
Consumption has continued to play a leading role in the country's economic growth this year. In the first three quarters, final consumption expenditure contributed 53.5 percent to economic growth, an increase of 9 percentage points compared to the whole of last year.
The annual Central Economic Work Conference proposed that in 2026, a special campaign to boost consumption will be implemented in depth, the supply of high-quality goods and services will be expanded, policies on new and emerging industries will be optimized, unreasonable restrictions in the consumption field will be eliminated, and the potential of service consumption will be unleashed.
"Previously, much of the consumption we have encouraged is for manufactured goods. However, the growth rate of our service sector is not as ideal as that of the manufacturing sector. Therefore, increasing some investment to encourage consumption in the service sector may play a better role in stabilizing growth and expanding domestic demand," said Huang Qunhui, a researcher of the Institute of Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Experts said that income is the primary factor determining consumption, and only by increasing residents' disposable income, can their consumption capacity be improved.
They also said that the conference, while emphasizing the promotion of consumption, also clearly pointed out the need to formulate and implement a plan to increase the income of urban and rural residents.
"The Third Plenary Session [of the 20th CPC Central Committee] mentioned the need to increase the proportion of residents' income, specifically the proportion of labor compensation within that income. The Fourth Plenary Session [of the 20th CPC Central Committee] further proposed implementing a specific income-increasing plan for urban and rural residents. Of course, consumption is not solely an income issue. We need to strengthen basic public services and improve our social security fund. If these issues are further improved and optimized, and residents have higher incomes, they will be more willing to spend more on consumption, especially on development-oriented consumption," said Huang.
Expanding domestic demand remains top priority for China's economic work in 2026: experts
