{"id":83604,"date":"2025-08-15T01:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T01:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/83604\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T01:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T01:49:13","slug":"amid-big-city-gloom-can-chinas-far-flung-counties-become-a-key-driver-of-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/83604\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid big-city gloom, can China\u2019s far-flung counties become a key driver of consumption?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As widespread economic gloom in China\u2019s megacities sees high-end restaurants close their doors one after another, Starbucks<\/a> is accelerating its expansion into the country\u2019s far-flung counties, where a growing number of residents are embracing a petit-bourgeois lifestyle.<\/p>\n

While county shopping centres might not stock Dyson vacuum cleaners and hairdryers, they have already become part of daily life in households in urban counties thanks to China\u2019s ubiquitous e-commerce networks.<\/p>\n

Driving Teslas and eating expensive cherries imported from South America, the expanding middle class in smaller cities and towns is fuelling China\u2019s next wave of consumption.<\/p>\n

As the world\u2019s second-largest economy grows more slowly, residents of major cities have reined in their spending. But the consumption upgrade in China\u2019s more numerous lower-tier markets is far from complete, experts said.<\/p>\n

With lighter economic burdens, faster income growth and greater confidence in the future, consumers in such areas have stronger purchasing power and a greater willingness to spend, becoming a new engine for consumption growth as China seeks to shift its economy towards a consumption-driven model and away from one relying on exports and investment.<\/p>\n

\u201cLower-tier cities have been overlooked in the past, with their consumption potential untapped, while the disposable consumption capacity of first-tier city residents is more affected by the slowing economy,\u201d said Professor Liu Xuexin, who heads a consumer data research institute at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing.<\/p>\n

In China\u2019s governance hierarchy, county-level cities sit below prefecture-level ones, covering smaller urban and rural areas, including townships and villages, and serving as regional hubs for commerce, education, healthcare and local government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As widespread economic gloom in China\u2019s megacities sees high-end restaurants close their doors one after another, Starbucks is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[550,28,144,20235,22318,58206,58203,8421,101,2106,58202,30606,27788,58205,58204,4633,36345],"class_list":["post-83604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-beijing","tag-business","tag-china","tag-consumer-confidence","tag-consumption","tag-consumption-growth","tag-county-level-cities","tag-e-commerce","tag-economy","tag-expansion","tag-lower-tier-cities","tag-middle-class","tag-rural-areas","tag-rural-consumption","tag-rural-households","tag-shanghai","tag-starbucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}