Chinese economy off to robust start in 2025 as growth gains momentum
The Chinese economy has maintained good growth momentum, starting the year on a steady note with sound industrial performances and impactful macro policies, official data revealed on Monday.
During January and February 2025, most key indicators saw solid increases, employment remained generally stable, and new quality productive forces continued to grow, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Given the economy's sound performance in the first two months, China has more favorable conditions to achieve its full-year growth target of around 5 percent for 2025, NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said at a press conference.
A good start
In the first two months of 2025, China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, increased 5.9 percent year over year. In February, industrial output grew 0.51 percent from January.
The country's fixed-asset investment totaled 5.2619 trillion yuan (about $734 billion) during the January-February period. It increased 4.1 percent year over year and was 0.9 percentage points higher than the full-year growth rate of 2024.
Investment in infrastructure construction rose 5.6 percent from a year ago during the two months, and manufacturing investment increased 9 percent.
The services sector also registered accelerated growth in the period, with its official production index growing 5.6 percent year over year at a rate 0.4 percentage points faster than the 2024 whole-year growth rate.
Retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of a country's consumption strength, climbed 4 percent year over year in the first two months of 2025 to over 8.37 trillion yuan, according to the NBS data.
The country's overall employment landscape has remained stable, with the average surveyed urban unemployment rate standing at 5.3 percent, level with the January-February period of last year.
Fu attributed the upbeat momentum to the synergistic effects of existing and incremental policies, highlighting the implementation of a more proactive fiscal policy and a moderately loose monetary policy this year.