Costco’s third store in mainland China began trial operations on March 10, 2023 in Shanghai’s Pudong District.
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BEIJING – China on Wednesday reported retail sales for the first two months of the year only in line with expectations, while real estate investment continued to fall.
Industrial production for the January-February period rose 2.4%, less than the 2.6% expected by a Portal poll.
As expected, retail sales increased by 3.5%. Most categories within retail sales rose, but large items such as cars and appliances saw sales decline. Online retail sales of physical goods rose 5.3% year over year in the first two months of the year.
Fixed investment rose 5.5%, beating expectations for 4.4% growth.
But within that category, real estate investment fell 5.7% in January and February from a year earlier. This follows a 10% decline in real estate investment over the whole of last year. Infrastructure and manufacturing investment grew at a slower pace than 2022 in the first two months of the year.
Urban unemployment rose to 5.6% in February, up 0.1 percentage point from January, the statistics bureau said. The unemployment rate for young people aged 16-24 remained consistently high at 18.1%, the data showed.
The data releases combine January and February figures — as is customary with the Chinese Bureau of Statistics — to avoid lunar new year bias. The holiday, the biggest of the year in China, marks a travel season of more than a month and can fall in either month depending on the year.
The figures mark the first full months since China ended its strict Covid controls in early December.
Preliminary data and anecdotes suggest that tourism and restaurant dining have recovered, but overall consumer spending remains tepid. Business surveys are now pointing to an increase in manufacturing activity.
“The external environment is even more complex, insufficient demand remains at the forefront and the foundation for an economic recovery is not yet solid,” China’s National Bureau of Statistics said in a release.
The Presidium called for market confidence to be strengthened and for “reasonable volume growth” to be achieved.
Chinese authorities this month announced a growth target of around 5%, which incoming Premier Li Qiang warned would not be easy for the country to achieve.
The data “reflects steady rather than accelerated momentum, which also suggests that strong policy support is needed to unleash growth potential,” said Guotai Junan’s Zhou Hao.
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