Since the reforming and opening up in 1978, China has experienced a miraculous development. To investigate the transformation and upgrading of China's economy, this study focuses on the relationship between economic growth and electricity consumption of the secondary and tertiary industry in China. This paper captures the dynamic interdependencies among the related variables using a theoretical framework based on a Vector Autoregressive (VAR)-Vector Error Correction (VEC) model. Using the macroeconomic and electricity consumption data, the results show that, for secondary industry, there is only a unidirectional Granger causality from electricity consumption to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 1980 to 2000. However, for the tertiary industry, it only occurs that GDP Granger causes electricity consumption from 2001 to 2014. All these conclusions are verified by the impulse response function and variance decomposition. This study has a great significance to reveal the relationship between industrial electricity consumption and the pattern of economic development. Meanwhile, it further suggests that, since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the trend of the economic transformation and upgrading has gradually appeared. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.