(Yicai) July 10 -- China plans to establish a modern retail system that features a reasonable layout, high-quality supply, diverse business formats, intelligent convenience, and orderly competition by 2030. 

The aim is to create a number of impactful retail scenarios, launch a series of innovative integrated business models, and cultivate a group of retail firms with global competitiveness, according to the Opinions on Accelerating the Innovative Development of the Retail Industry, jointly issued by the Ministry of Commerce and eight other government agencies.

The document outlines 20 policy measures across coordinated planning for a reasonable layout, improvement of product and service quality, coordinated optimization of stock and incremental synergy, and ensuring fair online and offline competition.

"For the issue of partial imbalance in retail commercial facilities, the establishment of a commercial facility saturation assessment mechanism was proposed for the first time, serving as a reference for project approval and social investment," Li Jialu, director of the commerce ministry's circulation industry development department, said at a press conference on the same day. 

It was also proposed to strengthen quality control and traceability in procurement, crack down on online and offline counterfeit production and sales, and encourage platform operators and counter lessors to include metrics such as the pass rate of inspections and return rates of resident merchants in their evaluations to promote consumer confidence, Li added.

In terms of regulating market order, the document requires promoting fair competition, strengthening antitrust reviews and price governance, and advancing integrated supervision of online and offline operations. It prohibits platforms from forcing merchants to participate in promotions or shifting costs, while also emphasizing the need for a strict crackdown on malicious claims and extortion.

Both online and offline retail are important components of the retail industry, Li noted. It is necessary to adopt an objective and rational attitude toward their relationship, guiding online platforms to empower offline operations while encouraging offline businesses to embrace online strategies, he said, adding that it is also essential to ensure fair competition.

China's retail industry is at a critical period of transformation and upgrading, facing various issues, including unreasonable layouts, supply-demand imbalances, and heavy cost burdens, Li stressed. Traditional hypermarkets and department stores are experiencing a decline in customer traffic, resulting in significant operational pressures, he added.

Over the past year, almost 61 percent of department stores saw a year-on-year decline in sales, with 65 percent reporting a drop in net profit, according to the results of a joint survey by the China Commerce Association for General Merchandise and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's HKUST Li & Fung Supply Chain Institute released in April. 

In addition, emerging channels such as membership and discount stores are rapidly gaining market share, while traditional hypermarkets continue to lose consumers, Bain & Company found.

Online retail sales of goods in China rose 5 percent to CNY5.27 trillion (USD777.3 billion) in the five months ended May 31 from a year earlier, accounting for 29 percent of the total, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Editor: Martin Kadiev