In recent years, the changes in the external environment and domestic development conditions have promoted the transformation of China’s economy to one dominated by domestic circulation. In December 2020, the Communist Party of China Central Committee put forward the demand-side reform for the first time in order to prepare China for the new development stage of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) and to promote the new strategic deployment of China’s high-quality development. Based on the paths and direction of the current 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2015) to build a new development pattern, this paper elaborates on the theoretical connotations of the demand-side reform, points out the bottlenecks such as the unreasonable demand structure in China, the mismatch between the industrial system and the high-level demand, the resulting demand spillovers, the poor demand channels, and puts forward the current approaches to the demand-side reform in China.