Official data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday showed that the country’s industrial output grew 6.1 percent year-on-year, stronger than analysts’ expectations of a 5.2 percent rise, while slowing down from the 7.7 percent jump in March.
The figures indicate that the impact of US tariffs was not particularly pronounced.
Growth of retail sales, a key gauge of consumption, slowed in April, rising by 5.1 percent from a year earlier, missing analysts’ estimates of 5.5 percent growth. This compared with 5.9 percent annual growth the previous month.
Growth in fixed-asset investment for the first four months of this year, including property and infrastructure investment, also slightly slowed, expanding by four percent, following a rise of 4.2 percent for the period from January to March.
But the urban jobless rate showed signs of improvement as it fell to 5.1 percent in April from 5.2 percent in March, at a time when the Sino-US trade war led economists to warn about substantial job losses in the country.
“Generally speaking, despite increasing impact of external shocks in April, with the synergy of macro policies, major indicators witnessed steady and fast growth, and the national economy maintained the new and positive development momentum,” said NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui, at a press briefing in Beijing.
“However, we should be aware that there are still many unstable and uncertain factors in the external environment, and the foundation for sustained economic recovery needs to be further consolidated.
“At the next stage, we must move faster to create a new pattern of development, and coordinate domestic economic work and endeavours in the international economic and trade field,” he told reporters.
Separately, Fu noted that the country’s foreign trade has been able to withstand increased external shocks, with exports of mechanical and electrical machinery rapidly growing.
Fu added that the country will continue to expand demand and optimise the industrial structure, while promoting producer prices to return to a reasonable range.
Authorities, he added, will also continue to give full play to the role of macro policies to stimulate demand.
Earlier this month, Beijing announced a package of stimulus measures, including interest rate cuts and a major liquidity injection, to prop up the economy and stabilise businesses and employment, just before a trade agreement was reached by China and the US following talks in Geneva.
The trade agreement between the two countries, which included rolling back most of the tariffs they imposed on each other for 90 days, marked a significant step for the world’s two largest economies to de-escalate trade tensions.
That also prompted a slew of global investment banks to raise their forecasts for China’s economic growth this year while paring back expectations for more proactive stimulus as Beijing strives to reach its growth target of around 5 percent this year.
