China's consumer market is resilient, has great potential and vitality, and the positive long-term fundamentals remain unchanged, said Xu Xingfeng, director of the Department of Consumption Promotion of the Ministry of Commerce of China (MOFCOM), at the third China International Consumer Products Expo in Hainan Province on Tuesday.

Investment and foreign trade 

With a solid industrial foundation and a series of policies to ensure supply, China's foreign trade in goods has maintained relatively high growth over the past five years. In 2022, the country's foreign trade volume reached 42 trillion yuan (about $5.94 trillion), according to data from China's General Administration of Customs. 

China has also accelerated efforts to attract and utilize more foreign investment. In 2022, China's FDI inflow in actual use expanded 6.3 percent year on year to 1.23 trillion yuan (about $189.1 billion), data from MOFCOM showed. 

Consumption 

The country has become the world's second-largest consumer market. 

According to the "2022 China Consumer Market Development Report" released by MOFCOM on the first day of the Hainan Expo, China's consumer market in 2022 showed eight characteristics: stable bulk consumption, the rapid development of online consumption, strong demand for quality consumption, the vigorous development of green consumption, significant heating up of healthy consumption, popularization of intelligent appliances, significant increase of instant delivery orders and popularization of leisure consumption. 

In 2022, China's consumer market generally maintained a stable development trend, with total retail sales of consumer goods reaching 44 trillion yuan (about $6.51 trillion), according to the data released by MOFCOM. China's online retail sales increased by 4 percent year on year in 2022 to nearly 13.8 trillion yuan (about $2 trillion).

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that, in 2022, China's per capita consumption expenditure was 24,538 yuan (about $3,588), an increase of 1.8 percent over the previous year. The market structure has also been upgraded over the period, with residents more focused on the quality of consumption. In 2022, the country's per capita expenditure on services accounted for over 40 percent of the people's total consumption, Xu said. 

With the implementation of various policies and measures to expand domestic consumption, the consumer market will continue to show a recovery trend in 2023, and the basic role of consumption in economic development will become more prominent, Xu said.