National Day Special Eight: From "Having Housing" to "Living in a Qualified Environment": The Changes in Housing and Transportation Consumption in the First Year of the '15-15' Plan Launch

Tracking consumer structure data reveals the critical turning points in housing and traveling consumption. From 2021 to 2025, the combined proportion of survival-type consumption items such as food, tobacco, and housing decreased by 2.2 percentage points, with housing expenditure decreasing from 23.4% to 21.7%; meanwhile, transportation and communication expenses increased from 13.1% to 14.6%, with a year-on-year growth rate of 8.3% in 2025, indicating that connected consumption is shifting forward rapidly. This structural shift aligns well with the strategic goal of the "15th Five-Year" Plan to expand domestic demand: when the rigid pressure of housing expenses eases, connected consumption represented by travel services and cultural tourism commuting becomes the main avenue for absorbing consumption growth.

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Frost & Sullivan

The macro foundation supports this transformation. In 2025, China's urbanization rate reached 67.9%, with 95.38 million urban residents; the total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded 50.1 trillion yuan, and final consumption expenditure contributed 52.0% to GDP growth. The "15th Five-Year" Plan sets the targets of over 60% final consumption rate by 2030 and over 65% by 2035. Housing and traveling, as the two largest segments of the consumption structure, will undoubtedly be the main areas for expanding the consumption rate.

The high prosperity of traveling service consumption has already been realized. In 2025, service retail sales increased by 5.5% year-on-year, 1.7 percentage points higher than the overall retail sales growth rate. Among them, retail sales of transportation and traveling services maintained double-digit growth; the number of travelers in 2025 reached 6.52 billion, with total spending of 6.3 trillion yuan. Benefiting from the 240-hour transit visa exemption policy, by the end of 2025, the number of foreign visitors increased by 27.2% year-on-year, and the export growth rate of travel services reached 51.3%. Service consumption expenditure has been rising for a long time: in 2025, per capita service consumption expenditure in China reached 13,602 yuan, accounting for 46.1% of per capita consumption expenditure, an increase of 5 percentage points compared to 2015. "People can move freely" is transforming from an infrastructure narrative into real consumption growth.

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Frost & Sullivan

The main line of housing consumption is shifting from "buying houses" to "quality renewal." The effects of policy tools are immediate: from 2024 to 2025, the consumer goods replacement program drove nearly 3.9 trillion yuan in related product sales, benefiting 490 million people; among them, 190 million household appliances were replaced, with over 90% having first-class energy efficiency; new phone subsidies drove sales of more than 91 million devices, and home improvement, kitchen, and bathroom "renewal" and green smart homes became the core drivers of housing consumption through policies.

Data source: "White Paper on China's Industrial Development Trends for the Next 50 Years (Volume 5)", Government of China Website, Frost & Sullivan

Smartness in home spaces is reshaping the meaning of "living." In 2025, the shipment of smart homes in China is expected to reach 280 million units, a 7.8% increase year-on-year; the penetration of AI PCs, smart homes, and smart wearable devices continues to rise, and home scenarios are becoming the core consumption battlefield. Brand customer acquisition paths are shifting from centralized platform traffic purchases to integrating into home, office, and travel-specific scenarios. The interaction interface is evolving from screen touch to multi-modal integration of voice, vision, and environmental perception, and "home" is upgrading from a living space to a smart service terminal integrating health monitoring, entertainment, and remote work.

Ageing poses another challenge for housing consumption. By the end of 2025, China had 320 million people aged 60 and above, accounting for 23.0% of the total population, and it is expected to exceed 400 million by around 2035. Correspondingly, elderly-friendly renovation and elderly-friendly homes are certain markets: the market size of elderly-friendly products reached 600 billion yuan in 2025, and 2 million households across the country underwent elderly-friendly renovation; in May 2026, GB/T 46484.1-2025 "Elderly-friendly Technical Specifications for Household Appliances" was officially implemented, and more than 20 provinces and cities offered subsidies for purchasing elderly-friendly smart homes, with a maximum subsidy of 30%. It is worth noting that the current demand rate for elderly-friendly renovation is only 42.7%, the lowest among all elderly consumption markets, indicating broad room for penetration increase. The "whole-home wellness" housing revolution has just begun.

Source: "White Paper on China's Industrial Development Trends for the Next 50 Years (Volume 5)", China Home Appliances Association, Frost & Sullivan

More advanced changes come from "physical intelligence" reshaping home services. In 2025, China's service robot production reached 1,858.1 million units, a 16.1% increase year-on-year; the market size of humanoid robots was 8.24 billion yuan, accounting for 50% of the global market; the embodied intelligence industry has entered the stage of mass production exploration, and delivery forms of home services such as domestic service, elderly care, and companionship are evolving from pure human labor to human-machine collaboration. At the same time, the contraction of population mobility has led to a shift in consumption scenarios from cross-city movement to local development, and the "15-minute life circle" composed of community commerce and instant retail continues to expand, redefining the consumption radius of living spaces—"living" is no longer just a physical space but a traffic entry point for local life services.

The first main line of traveling consumption is the shift from consumer spending on transportation tools to consumer spending on travel experiences. In 2025, the retail sales of tourism consulting and leasing services, transportation services, and cultural and sports leisure services all maintained double-digit growth. The number of performances and box office revenue in the country increased by 6.6% and 6.4% respectively, and the integrated consumption of "traveling" and "traveling" is accelerating. Policies continue to support: In 2026, the government work report proposed actively developing the event economy, ice and snow economy, and outdoor sports; the "Work Plan to Accelerate the Cultivation of New Growth Points for Service Consumption" listed sports event services as a potential area for service consumption, promoting sports health consumption to extend from single sports participation to a composite scenario of "events + culture and tourism + business + socializing + city destinations," directly driving hotel catering, transportation, outdoor equipment, and local business consumption. By the end of 2025, the number of outdoor sports consumers in China exceeded 800 million, with total consumption exceeding 1 trillion yuan; "traveling consumption" is becoming one of the most flexible segments in service consumption.

Source: "White Paper on China's Industrial Development Trends for the Next 50 Years (Volume 5)", General Administration of Sport of China, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Frost & Sullivan

Data from the retail side confirm the value of this trend: In 2025, the retail sales of sports and entertainment products by enterprises above a certain scale reached 1,703 billion yuan, a 15.7% increase year-on-year, significantly higher than the overall retail sales growth rate; the market size of equipment also expanded simultaneously. The market size of China's outdoor sports products industry increased from 29.92 billion US dollars in 2020 to 365.4 billion US dollars in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.1%. It is expected to reach 518.7 billion US dollars in 2029, and the compound annual growth rate during the 2025-2029 forecast period is approximately 5.8%. The industry is evolving from a temporary hot spot to a stable lifestyle-oriented consumption direction.

Source: Statista, Frost & Sullivan

Green and low-carbon features provide another value line for traveling consumption. The market size of low-carbon consumption in China has increased from 4.0 trillion yuan in 2021 to 7.0 trillion yuan in 2025, maintaining double-digit growth for three consecutive years. It is expected to reach 106.5 trillion yuan by 2075. Green traveling, low-carbon culture and tourism, and other scenario-based consumption are accelerating penetration. The "Implementation Plan to Promote Green Consumption" integrates green concepts throughout key areas such as food, clothing, housing, and transportation, clearly stating that by 2030, green consumption will become the public's conscious choice. At the same time, large-scale equipment renewal and consumer goods replacement programs continue to guide the green and intelligent upgrade of major durable products such as household appliances and home improvement, and green consumption is moving from concept advocacy to a scaled lifestyle.

The lower-tier market constitutes another source of growth for traveling consumption. In 2025, the growth rate of rural residents' consumption expenditure (+5.1%) continued to outpace that of urban residents (+3.8%). The trend of consumption sinking and supply chain node functions in the county level is clear. With policies such as "Home Appliance to Rural Areas" penetrating to the county level, and the logistics system of "origin warehouse - regional distribution - end nodes" including lower-tier cities into the national unified consumption network, the penetration of green household appliances and smart traveling equipment in the county level will continue to increase. County-level consumption upgrade and urban consumption expansion form a parallel pattern, and the potential of housing and traveling consumption in the lower-tier market will gradually be realized during the "15th Five-Year" plan period.

The expansion of traveling experience consumption cannot be separated from the continuous encryption of the infrastructure network and the three-dimensional nature of traveling. In 2025, China's railway operational mileage reached 16.5 million kilometers, including 5.0 million kilometers of high-speed trains, accounting for more than 70% of the global high-speed train mileage; the total highway mileage was nearly 20 million kilometers, covering 99% of cities with a population of 200,000 or more; civil aviation cargo and mail transportation volume exceeded 10 million tons; express delivery volume approached 2,000 billion pieces, ranking first globally for 12 consecutive years, accounting for about 60% of the global total. The three-dimensional transportation network connecting railways and highways significantly reduced the spatial distance between regions, providing a hardware foundation for new traveling consumption scenarios such as "transportation + culture and tourism" and "transportation + logistics".

Source: "White Paper on China's Industrial Development Trends for the Next 50 Years (Volume 5)", National Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Transport, Frost & Sullivan

The end-density of the logistics network is also reshaping the boundaries of "living" and "traveling". In 2025, China's instant retail market size was approximately 1.2 trillion yuan, and near-field e-commerce was approximately 1.4 trillion yuan. Relying on a 558.3 billion order instant delivery network, "hourly" and "minute" delivery capabilities make "buying and getting things without leaving home" a normal situation for housing consumption. High-density end delivery networks drive e-commerce penetration and market expansion, including lower-tier cities and rural markets into the national unified consumption network. The migration path of consumption needs is clear: from planned purchases to large-scale non-planned, instant purchases, and from "people searching for goods" to "goods finding people".

Looking back at the "14th Five-Year" Plan and looking forward to the "15th Five-Year" Plan, the narrative logic of housing and traveling consumption has been rewritten: On the housing side, from large-scale incremental development to renewal of existing assets through replacement, smart homes, and elderly-friendly renovation, the 600 billion yuan market for elderly-friendly products and 280 million smart home units are just the starting point; on the traveling side, from single transportation tool consumption to composite scenario consumption of "culture and tourism + events + green" solutions, 800 million people engaged in outdoor sports and 6.52 billion travelers outlined a new growth curve. The three-stage evolution path of the large consumer industry also applies to housing and traveling: during the structural transition period from 2026 to 2035, when the urbanization rate approaches 70% and the proportion of service consumption exceeds half, "smart living and comfortable traveling" will turn from a vision into daily reality. For enterprises, those who can establish scenario operation capabilities at the intersection of smart spaces and traveling scenarios will hold the key to growth in housing and traveling consumption in the next decade.