The secretary-general of xi stated: “consisting on expanding the strategic base of domestic demand, maintaining a strong link between people's livelihoods and consumption, investment in goods and people's investments, promoting a virtuous interaction between consumption and investment, supply and demand, continuously upgrading the quality and level of the economic cycle and enhancing the dynamism and reliability of the domestic cycle.” the party's recommendation of the 20th mid-term plenary, 4th session, states: “promoting a more demand-led, consumption-driven and endogenous growth model of economic development.” the central economic work conference, held at the end of last year, set the priorities for this year's economic work, with “maintaining domestic demand ownership and building a strong domestic market” first. At present, the country is entering a high-quality stage of development and the role of consumption is undergoing a profound change: it is both an important means of meeting people's needs for a better life, an important force in providing for innovation, promoting industrial upgrading, facilitating factor restructuring, and, above all, addressing uncertainty in the external environment. Youth consumption has dynamism and potential. Accurately capturing the new characteristics of youth consumption and fully exploiting its unique role in terms of pre-positioning the supply structure and external incentives for innovative systems is important for achieving a higher level of dynamic balance between supply and demand, enhancing the dynamism within economic development and accelerating the construction of a new development landscape。
According to the rationale of marxist political economics, production and consumption are interdependent and mutually constrained, and production determines consumption, which is also counterproductive to production. Max pointed out that “consumption is also production” and revealed that consumption is not just a value realization link, but a process deeply embedded in social reproduction. Under new historical conditions, this theory gives rise to a new era: consumption can deepen the social division of labour through outsourcing of services, drive industrial innovation through structural upgrading, promote knowledge spillovers through “third space” interactions, and sequester data elements through new consumption. This shift shows that consumption has become an important component in shaping productivity, and that youth consumption is a central expression of the new dynamics of growth and innovation that are embedded therein。
The contribution of youth consumption to innovation in production is demonstrated, first and foremost, by the optimization of human capital allocation through service substitution and the enhancement of full factor productivity. As the social division of labour is refined, contemporary youth are more inclined to achieve a more efficient socialization of the supply and specialization of services through the purchase of domestic services, meals, distribution services, etc., and the outsourcing to the market of labour that would otherwise have been performed through household production. This outsourcing mechanism not only drives the development of modern services and expands the effective demand for service consumption, but also gives young people more time and energy for learning upgrading and innovation creation, enhancing continuity and stability in human capital accumulation. This “consumer-for-time” option is essentially designed to promote the allocation of labour resources to higher-productivity sectors by optimizing time allocation, and to accumulate higher-quality human resources for economic growth。
The contribution of youth consumption to innovation in production is also reflected in the acceleration of technological overlaps through demand-driven re-engineering through space. Young people are often the first testers of new products and practices. From smart wear devices to generating artificial intelligence applications, young people's consumption of cutting-edge technology products provides an application landscape for new technologies, accelerates the transformation of scientific and technological results into real productivity and promotes continuous optimization of products through high-frequency use feedback. At the same time, the emotional value demands generated by youth in areas such as state-tide brands, immersion experiences and the promotion of collaborative development of content and design research and development. For example, small, low-threshold products quickly create stable demand and facilitate the extension of value chains through “small, quick” production, flexible production, etc. In this process, demand signals, product overlays and branding reinforce each other and drive the supply side to complete innovation upgrading in a shorter cycle. In addition, “third space” consumption, such as cafés, cultural salons and shared offices, has become a venue for knowledge dissemination and creative collisions, extending the consumer landscape to innovative scenes and infusing sustained energy for urban economic development。
The contribution of youth consumption to innovation in production is also reflected in providing key elements of the digital economy as a data producer. In the digital economy, data have become a new production factor. As “digital first nations”, every click and interaction of youth groups in online shopping, social entertainment, knowledge payments, etc. Is generating high-value data resources. The big amounts of data deposited by these consumption behaviours, which are desensitized, cleansed and excavated, feed back to the supply side, become important engines for enterprises to optimize production processes, match supply and demand with precision, and drive industry digitization. Young consumers are thus involved in the value-creation process and become important players in both consumption and value creation in the digital economy industry chain. Moreover, the data elements further strengthen the closed loop between demand identification, supply response and experience optimization, enabling enterprises to achieve accurate r & d and personalized services at lower cost, improving resource allocation efficiency and promoting digital economy efficiency gains in the context of compliance governance。
Better use of youth consumption as a catalyst for innovation in production is key to integrating youth consumption into strategies to scale up domestic demand, creating systemic policy underpinnings in terms of efficiency enhancement, innovation pull and value transformation. First, it aims to improve efficiency and service delivery systems. Improving the quality and accessibility of care, home economics, old age and health management services, improving industry standards and regulatory mechanisms, and supporting young people to invest more time and energy in skills upgrading and innovation, with higher levels of investment in people's growth. Second, looking at innovation leads to optimizing new consumption environments. With the implementation of the “two new” policy as a lever, new consumption expansions such as smart terminals, green low-carbon, artificial intelligence are promoted, and enterprises are supported in applying pilot and scenario creation; urban upgrading and upgrading of public space quality are promoted, higher quality consumption spaces are created and urban innovation is enhanced. Third, value transformation with a view to enhancing synergies between data governance and cultural supply. Improve the rules of personal information protection and platform governance to facilitate the consistent flow and effective use of data elements; strengthen copyright protection and original incentives to support the healthy development of new business practices, such as cultural performances, creative design, immersion experience, and promote the expansion of youth consumption dynamics into industrial chains and the leap to value chains。
(by the faculty of management sciences and real estate of chongqing university and the antai school of economics and management of shanghai university of transport, respectively)
Daily people's journal (11/02 09 edition 2026)
Peng, go ahead
