XINHUA – China’s retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country’s consumption strength, climbed four per cent year on year in the first two months of 2025, official data showed.
The growth rate is 0.5 percentage points higher than that in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Total retail sales of consumer goods reached over CNY8.37 trillion (about USD1.17 trillion) from January to February.
Excluding automobiles, the figure was CNY7.68 trillion, registering a year-on-year growth of 4.8 per cent. “Markets are the scarcest resource. With a population of over 1.4 billion and a per capita gross domestic product of over USD13,000, China offers a market with huge potential, broad space and great development opportunities,” NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui told a press conference.
Retail sales in the country’s urban regions rose 3.8 per cent year on year in the two-month period, while that in rural areas expanded 4.6 per cent. Online retail sales jumped 7.3 per cent year on year to around CNY2.28 trillion in the period. In particular, online retail sales of physical goods rose five per cent year on year to CNY1.86 trillion, accounting for 22.3 per cent of the total retail sales of consumer goods.
As Chinese residents’ consumption capacity grows and consumption upgrades speed up, new types of consumption such as green and digital consumption, and service consumption such as elderly and childcare services, are expanding and will become key drivers of consumption growth, Fu said.
