China poised to overtake US as largest consumer market

China is expected to surpass the US as the world's largest consumer market this year or next year, said Shanghai Securities News, citing experts. In November, the country's retail sales of consumer goods reached 3.81 trillion yuan ($540 billion), realizing an 8 percent increase for the first time since July and a pace of growth rising 0.8 percentage points from October.

Moreover, the figure totaled 37.29 trillion yuan from January to November.

Chinese people spent 33.1 billion yuan on cosmetics, surging 16.8 percent year-onyear in November. In the first eleven months, the figure totaled 270 billion yuan. Cosmetics are becoming a daily requirement for most people in China, said the newspaper, citing Zhao Ping, director of the international trade research department at the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Academy.

Makeup for beauty is no longer exclusively for women, with men's cosmetics coming into fashion, Zhao said. Although the consumer base for men's cosmetics is small, it is seeing rapid growth and maintaining a double-digit increase, Zhao added.

Chinese people's spending on household products is on the rise, especially showing huge potential in fourth- and fifthtier cities, said Shen Jianguang, vice-president and chief economist at JD Digits.

In 2018, the consumption scale gap between China and the US has narrowed to $280 billion, Zhao said. China is the world's fastest-growing consumer market, said Guan Lixin, an official with the Ministry of Commerce.

Online sales in the US were $7.4 billion in this year's Black Friday shopping spree, while the figure from Alibaba's platform reached $3.83 billion for the Chinese Singles Day shopping event, Guan said.

In the first 10 months, the consumption growth in Dalian, Xi'an, Changsha and Zhengzhou has been over 25 percent, showing strong power. Thanks to strong population inflows, the consumption growth from second-tier metropolitan areas has been higher than that from firsttier metropolitan areas, Shen said.

It's noteworthy that the total consumption growth from fourth- and fifth-tier cities has become higher than that from other cities, but the consumption structure in counties should be improved, Shen added. In the future, China's development will be more driven by domestic demand and consumption with the growth becoming more sustainable, said Fu Linghui, a spokesman with the National Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile, more US products will be exempt from China's first round of additional tariffs starting Dec 26, the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council said on Thursday. It is the second set of US goods to be excluded from China's first round of tariff countermeasures. The move is part of the broader efforts to further ease China-US trade friction following the much-anticipated partial deal between the two sides.

China's exclusions on some US chemical products, such as white oil, will apply for a year starting Dec 26, the commission said in a statement. Duties that have already been imposed will not be refunded. The remaining US products subject to China's first round of additional tariffs will not be excluded for the time being, the commission said.

The commission said it will continue the exemption process and release the exclusion lists of US goods subject to the second round of additional tariffs in due course. Last week, the world's two largest economies reached an agreement on the text of their phase-one trade deal on the basis of equality and mutual respect. The US promised to eliminate extra tariffs on Chinese goods phase by phase, Chinese officials said.

Speaking at a weekly briefing on Thursday, Gao Feng, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, said the economic and trade teams of the two sides are communicating closely about the follow-up work like the signing of the agreement. The contents of the deal will be released after the official signatures, Gao said.

Earlier reports said the deal will cover intellectual property rights, technology transfer, food and agricultural products, financial services, exchange rates and transparency. Both nations have agreed to accelerate legal approvals for the deal.

Analysts said the phase-one agreement will benefit both countries and the whole world. But uncertainties still exist, they said.