New drivers of growth get route for success

Zhu said the marginal effect of investment has dropped over the past few years and that should be one of the reasons behind the guideline to boost consumption.

In the meantime, the economy is in a stable condition but also faces some challenges, such as trade protectionism, said Chen Fengying, a senior researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. In this sense, consumption could be an effective way to uphold the economic growth, she said.

In addition, growing residential leverage in recent years shrank the space for individual consumption. China's overall residential leverage rose to 51 percent in the second quarter of this year, two percentage points higher than at the end of last year, according to a report on China's deleveraging campaign released by the National Institution for Finance and Development last week.

The past several years saw a huge increase in mortgages. The balance of overall housing mortgages hit 21.6 trillion yuan in the second quarter of last year, 10 trillion yuan more than 2015, said the People's Bank of China, the central bank.

Therefore, the guideline set specific targets to boost the development of long-term housing rentals and emerging sectors, which can endow residents more extra money to buy things and also to improve the quality of China-made products and services to meet changing demands, said Zhu.

If all consumption drivers listed in the guideline can develop well, the document can integrate consumption with China's economic transformation to a mid-and high-end one, he added.