Recently, six departments, including the Ministry of Commerce, issued the "Guiding Opinions on Better Serving the Real Economy and Promoting the High-Quality Development of E-commerce" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). This document establishes a policy framework with 16 targeted measures to deepen the integration of e-commerce and the real economy. The Opinions address the key issue of "how e-commerce can better serve the real economy," outlining a comprehensive roadmap for the industry's high-quality development, covering areas from upgrading quality consumption to the deep empowerment of "Artificial Intelligence + E-commerce," from smoothing the production and sales cycle between urban and rural areas to reinforcing platform governance responsibilities. E-commerce is rooted in and has grown alongside the real economy; it is not only a vital component of the real economy but also a crucial lever for empowering it. Data shows that China's online retail market scale has ranked first globally for 13 consecutive years. In 2025, the national online retail sales approached 16 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.6% from the previous year. After years of rapid development, e-commerce has become deeply integrated into all aspects of economic and social life, evolving from an initial "supplementary channel" to a "mainstream front." With "serving the real economy" as its core directive, the Opinions aim to steer e-commerce's transformation from being "traffic-driven" to "value-driven." Essentially, this involves using digital empowerment to remove blockages in production, distribution, and consumption, thereby enhancing economic operational efficiency and fostering a virtuous economic ecosystem where "digital empowers the real, and the real supports digital."
High-quality development of e-commerce requires empowerment and efficiency gains through "digital-real integration." For instance, the false eyelash industry in Pingdu, Qingdao, Shandong, leveraged traffic support from e-commerce platforms to upgrade from low-end contract manufacturing to producing global hit products, driving the development of the local beauty product industrial cluster. Similarly, small commodities from Yiwu, Zhejiang, utilizing "AI Shopkeepers," have achieved multilingual services, design optimization, and logistics upgrades, enabling them to go global, build their brands, and demonstrate how "small products can leverage large markets." Provisions within the Opinions, such as "assisting SMEs in transformation" and "cultivating industrial e-commerce," are designed to use e-commerce empowerment to increase exposure for high-quality domestic goods, rural specialties, and artisanal products. This approach aims to achieve benefits for consumers (getting good value), businesses (gaining development), and industries (achieving upgrades), positioning e-commerce as a "catalyst" for improving quality and efficiency in real industries.
High-quality e-commerce development necessitates strengthening innovation leadership and deepening the application of digital technologies. The Opinions support the application of new models like "AI + E-commerce." This is not only crucial for the e-commerce industry's own upgrade but also serves to further enhance the operational efficiency of the overall economy by empowering the real economy with digital technology. Furthermore, the Opinions propose "optimizing digital life services," encouraging e-commerce platforms to extend from mere commodity transactions to service provision, expanding online-offline integrated consumption scenarios, and improving a convenient and beneficial digital service system. These deployments, driven by technological innovation for industrial upgrade and model innovation for optimized service supply, focus on both enhancing the innovation capability and core competitiveness of the e-commerce industry and on smoothing economic circulation and activating consumption potential, continuously promoting the deep integration of the digital and real economies.
High-quality e-commerce development cannot be achieved without a supportive ecosystem. The Opinions call for reinforcing the primary responsibility of platforms and strengthening常态化 (normalized) supervision. By addressing issues such as cut-throat low-price competition and counterfeit products, and by improving the market supervision system, the goal is to create a fair and orderly market environment. This not only protects consumer rights and boosts consumption confidence but also guides market participants to focus on quality and innovation, avoiding resource waste and achieving sustainable industry development. This provides a stable market environment for e-commerce to better serve the real economy. The outline for the 15th Five-Year Plan points to "promoting the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy." Continuously advancing the high-quality development of e-commerce to better serve and strengthen the real economy will inject more powerful momentum into advancing Chinese modernization.
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