BEIJING, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- For 72-year-old Zhu Chengyi and his wife Li Lan, 71, replacing a decade-old air conditioner in their home in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, brought more than just cooler air.
Their new smart air conditioner can respond to voice commands and be controlled through a mobile app, allowing their daughter living in Guangdong Province, also in south China, to help adjust the temperature remotely.
The couple made this upgrade under China's consumer goods trade-in program, as the country's smart home market increasingly moves beyond individual appliance upgrades toward more connected household systems.
China on Monday unveiled an action plan to further promote smart home consumption by enriching application scenarios and expanding high-quality supply.
The plan, jointly issued by eight government departments including the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, also calls for supporting elderly-friendly renovation and smart upgrading of older homes while better meeting the consumption needs of different groups.
The plan sets out seven measures to expand high-quality smart home supply, improve the smart home standards system, support smart home consumption, develop elderly-friendly smart home products, streamline the service chain for recycling used household goods, optimize community services, and strengthen fiscal and financial support.
The plan comes as Chinese consumers are increasingly looking beyond simple product replacement toward broader upgrades in home living.
Chinese consumers are shifting from meeting basic needs to pursuing quality experiences and from simple product replacement to holistic lifestyle upgrades, according to a white paper released by the China Household Electrical Appliances Association earlier this year.
It identified major trends for 2026, including a shift from passive response to proactive intelligence, deeper integration of health-related scenarios, the robotization of home appliances, and the development of whole-home artificial intelligence ecosystems.
To expand supply, the plan encourages manufacturers to step up research and development of smart home products, and supports home furnishing stores and shopping malls in setting up smart home experience centers and model rooms for whole-home smart systems and digital homes.
Regarding standards, it calls for improving the grading and evaluation standards system for smart home products, and accelerating the formulation and implementation of mandatory national standards on connectivity and interoperability.
To support consumption, the plan encourages local authorities to determine eligible smart home product categories and subsidy standards based on local conditions under China's 2026 consumer goods trade-in policy.
Under this policy, local governments have greater flexibility in designing subsidy programs. The country plans to allocate 250 billion yuan (about 36.93 billion U.S. dollars) in ultra-long special treasury bond funds to support the nationwide program.
China's consumer trade-in programs generated 1.1 trillion yuan in sales in the first half of 2026, benefiting consumers on 150 million occasions, with home appliance trade-ins reaching 63.27 million units and purchases of digital and smart products totaling 79.1 million units.
The plan encourages home furnishing and decoration businesses to work with recycling companies to combine the delivery of new products with the collection of used ones.
At the community level, the plan supports the establishment of home renovation service stations to provide services such as maintenance, storage, recycling and replacement.
The plan also encourages financial institutions to diversify consumer finance products and services and expand lending for smart-home consumption, including by leveraging the country's interest-subsidy policy for personal consumption loans.
For elderly consumers, the plan promotes home service robots, health monitoring and smart care products, and encourages elderly-friendly design in areas like ease of operation, dialect recognition and safety.
Such products are already finding their way into Chinese homes. A home service robot developer at the 2026 World Robot Conference said its robots were already in paid use in more than 500 households, performing tasks such as basic housework, family companionship and pet care.
Other robots are being developed specifically for elderly care, with functions ranging from companionship and mobility assistance to recording health data, including blood pressure and blood glucose levels. A report by the China Software Testing Center projected that China's elderly-care service robot market will exceed 10 billion yuan in 2026.
Such applications form part of a broader push to upgrade smart home consumption, which is in line with China's plan for expanding consumption during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030). The plan calls for smart upgrades to home appliances and furnishings, better connectivity among smart home devices, and a shift from smart individual products toward whole-home smart systems. ■
