Using a carefully selected industry classification standard, we divided 102 industry security indices in China's stock market into four demand-oriented sector groups and identified demand-oriented industry-specific volatility spillover networks. The demandoriented concept is a new way in which to reconstruct the structure of the networks. Analyzing networks from a demand-oriented perspective can improve the understanding of the change in economic demand, especially when the macroeconomy is dramatically influenced by exogenous shocks, such as those due to the outbreak of COVID-19. At the beginning of the outbreak, spillover effects from industry indices of sectors meeting the investment demand to those meeting the consumption demands rose significantly in China's stock market. However, these spillover effects declined after the outbreak containment in China appeared to be effective. In addition, some service sectors, including utility, transportation and information services, have played increasingly important roles in the networks of industry-specific volatility spillovers since the COVID-19 outbreak. The efforts to contain the outbreak, led by the Chinese government, have been successful and work resumption has been organized with high efficiency. First, the risk of investment demand has therefore been controlled and eliminated relatively quickly. Second, the intensive use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) has led to supply restrictions in services in China, which will still be a potential threat to economic recovery in the next stage. Contribution/Originality: This is one of very few studies that has investigated the volatility spillovers in the industry-specific networks of China's stock market during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper's primary contribution is finding the critical role that the service sectors play in the industry-specific network after the COVID-19 outbreak was contained. 1. INTRODUCTION Frequently in the stock market, fluctuations in stock prices initially occur in companies belonging to one sector and gradually spread to other sectors. China's stock market has become the second largest in the world. Up to January 2020, 3780 companies from a variety of sectors listed their shares on China's stock market, which had a total value of more than 60.38 billion RMBs (approximately equal to 8.65 trillion US dollars). Thus, it is important Asian Economic and Financial Review