China economy continues strong growth trajectory in October, but imbalances remain

China’s industrial production grew by 6.9 per cent in October year on year, retail sales grew by 4.3 per cent and fixed asset investment grew by 1.8 per cent year to date

Retail sales continued to lag industrial output, with consumers remaining cautious in their spending in the world’s most populous nation

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China’s retail sales, a key indicator of consumption trends in the world’s most populous nation, grew by 4.3 per cent from a year earlier, marking the third successive month of expansion. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 10:00am, 16 Nov 2020Updated: 11:01pm, 16 Nov 2020

China’s economy expanded strongly in October, as the recovery in consumption continued to gather pace, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Monday showed.

But imbalances remained, with the industrial and investment-led parts of the economy outperforming analysts’ expectations, while consumption lagged behind.

Industrial production, a gauge of manufacturing, mining and utilities output in the Chinese economy, grew by 6.9 per cent from a year earlier, the same level of growth as in September and faster than expected. A poll of analysts conducted by Bloomberg had predicted 6.7 per cent growth.

Retail sales, a key indicator of consumption trends in the world’s most populous nation, grew by 4.3 per cent from a year earlier, marking the third successive month of expansion. This was up from 3.3 per cent growth in September, but missed expectations. Analysts had forecast 5.0 per cent growth.

Fixed asset investment grew by 1.8 per cent over the first 10 months of the year, with the pace picking up from 0.8 per cent in the first nine months. This was ahead of analysts’ expectations of 1.6 per cent growth. This was powered by a huge uptick in investment in the primary industries – such as mining, farming, quarrying – and hi-tech sectors.

The surveyed jobless rate, an imperfect measurement of unemployment in China which does not include figures for the tens of millions of migrant workers that work across the country, was 5.3 per cent in October, down from 5.4 per cent in September.

At a press conference in Beijing on Monday, Fu Linghui, spokesman for the NBS, said that China had created 10.09 million jobs over the first 10 months of the year, “meeting the target for the whole year ahead of schedule”.