China’s August retail sales, the country’s last economic sector to recover from the economic shutdown, grew 0.5 percent in August above the August 2019 level.
August is the first month this year when retail sales grew instead of shrinking. However, retail sales still lag last year’s rate overall by 8.6 percent.
Business investment and rail and air travel also showed gains in August. Real estate investments rose 4.6 percent compared to last year.
Industrial production rose 5.6 percent, beating analysts’ expectations of a 5.2-percent bump, and is now 0.4 percent ahead of last year’s pace.
The gains followed a 3.2-percent boost in second-quarter GDP.
The official unemployment slid to 5.6 percent, its best since January’s 5.3 percent when the COVID shutdown was imposed.
The renminbi, China’s internal currency, gained 0.3 percent against the dollar, rising to 6.7897, its best showing since May 2019.
Lagging retail sales in prior months sparked worries of a “two-track recovery,” with government and industry spending again but consumers failing to do their part.
But now, with only a trickle of new virus cases reported in weeks, consumers are flocking to shopping malls, restaurants, and movie theaters, where box office revenue has climbed to 90 percent of pre-COVID volume.
China’s economic recovery “is on a reasonably firm footing now,” Oxford Economics said in a statement, and should continue through the rest of this year into 2021.
