China says retail sales, industrial production growth slowed in October

Cars queued for export are pictured at a port in Yantai, in China’s eastern Shandong province. Export activity continued to outshine sluggish domestic consumption. (AFP pic) BEIJING: China's consumption growth slowed in October, official data showed Friday, as leaders struggle to overcome an entrenched slump in domestic demand in the world's second-largest economy. Retail sales rose 2.9 percent on-year last month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, slightly lower than the three percent increase recorded in September and the fifth straight month of slowing growth. Beijing has been battling sluggish domestic spending since the end of the Covid pandemic, with a prolonged debt crisis in the property sector weighing on consumer sentiment. In a sign of continuing strain on the once-booming sector, prices for new residential properties fell year-on-year in October in 61 out of 70 major cities surveyed by statistics authorities, data showed Friday. NBS data also showed factory activity in October fell short of expectations. Industrial production rose 4.9 percent year-on-year last month, lower than a Bloomberg forecast of 5.5 percent and the slowest increase since August last year. In another worrying sign for policymakers, fixed-asset investment in the January-October period was down 1.7 percent year-on-year. The indicator slipped into negative territory in September, falling 0.5 percent year-on-year. The latest drop "reflects the weak property sector investment as well as lacklustre infrastructure investment", wrote Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, in a note.