China’s economy continues ＂steady progress＂ and five big data show ＂structural change＂
BEIJING, Beijing, June 14 (Zhong Qing) On the 13 th, Sheng Laiyun, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics and director of the National Economic Statistics Department, said at the press conference on the operation of the national economy in May that "the national economy continued this year’s smooth operation and steady progress, and positive factors continued to accumulate."
How to understand "stability" and "progress" here? Sheng Laiyun affirmed the overall stability of China’s economic operation from five aspects: industrial production, service industry development, market sales, employment and price. For "Jin", he believes that it is mainly reflected in the steady advancement of structural adjustment and transformation and upgrading.
In order to find the "structural changes" behind these economic developments, the reporter from Zhongxin.com combed five macroeconomic data and told you how the national economy "strives for progress steadily".
Investment structure
The growth rate of investment in energy-intensive manufacturing industry is falling.
In the case of relatively stable prices and industrial operation, the investment data of one of the "Troika" showed a downward trend.
According to the data released by the Bureau of Statistics on the 13th, from January to May, the national investment in fixed assets (excluding farmers) was 18,767.1 billion yuan, a nominal increase of 9.6% year-on-year, and the growth rate dropped by 0.9 percentage points compared with that in January-April.
"The growth rate of investment in fixed assets has indeed declined somewhat, but the investment structure is being optimized." Sheng Laiyun pointed out that high-tech investment and service industry investment in fixed assets investment have maintained a relatively fast growth rate, and the proportion is increasing; However, the growth rate of investment with high energy consumption, especially in industries with overcapacity, is declining.
Specifically, investment in high-tech industries increased by 13.6% in the first five months, which was 4 percentage points higher than the growth rate of total investment; In addition, the investment in industrial technological transformation is obviously improving, with an increase of 14.9% from January to May, which is 5.3 percentage points higher than the average growth rate; The proportion of investment in service industry was 57.4%, an increase of 1.2 percentage points over the same period of last year.
On the contrary, investment in industries with high energy consumption and overcapacity began to decline. Sheng Laiyun pointed out that the investment in the six high-energy-consuming manufacturing industries decreased by 1.5%, of which the investment in coal mining and washing industries decreased by 32.9%.
At the monthly economic data conference held on the 13th, the narrowing of the growth rate of private investment attracted media attention. The data shows that private investment in fixed assets increased by 3.9% year-on-year in the first five months, which was 1.3 percentage points lower than that in the first four months. Will this drag down China’s economic growth?
"The slowdown in the growth rate of private investment shows that the endogenous power of the economy needs to be strengthened", Sheng Laiyun bluntly answered the above questions, but this endogenous downward pressure does not necessarily mean the inevitable decline of the economy, which is related to the adjustment of China’s economic structure and power conversion.
Sheng Laiyun explained in detail two reasons for the decline of private investment: on the one hand, the ex-factory price of industrial products has continued to decline in recent years, especially the profit growth rate of some industries with overcapacity may decline, which has affected investment enthusiasm; On the other hand, it is related to the lack of access to private capital in some fields, which limits the entry of private capital to some extent.
Foreign trade structure
The import and export of private enterprises increased and their proportion increased.
Just last week, the General Administration of Customs released the latest import and export data, and the monthly import growth rate turned positive for the first time in 19 months.
According to customs statistics, the total import and export volume in May was 2,019 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.8%. Among them, exports were 1,171.9 billion yuan, an increase of 1.2%; Imports reached 847.1 billion yuan, up by 5.1%. Import and export balance, with a surplus of 324.8 billion yuan.
According to Xinhua News Agency, people in the industry believe that the external environment will be unstable and uncertain in the next few months, and the downward pressure on imports and exports will remain high. However, China’s series of foreign trade policies and measures adhere to the problem orientation, pay more attention to the transfer of processing trade to the central and western regions, and pay more attention to the adjustment of foreign trade structure and encourage innovation, which will create a more favorable environment for foreign trade development, effectively boost the confidence of import and export enterprises and enhance their ability to take orders.
From the data, the effect of structural adjustment can still be seen in the import and export of foreign trade in the first five months, and the import and export of private enterprises continued to grow and the proportion increased.
In the first five months, the import and export of private enterprises was 3.56 trillion yuan, up 6.9%, accounting for 38.8% of China’s total foreign trade, up 3.6 percentage points over the same period last year.
In terms of export product structure, the export of mechanical and electrical products declined, while the export of traditional labor-intensive products such as textiles and clothing increased. In the first five months, the export of mechanical and electrical products in China was 3.03 trillion yuan, down 2.5%; In the same period, the total export of seven categories of labor-intensive products, including clothing, textiles, furniture, footwear, plastic products, toys and luggage, increased by 2%, accounting for over 20% of the total export value.
consumption structure
Online retail continues to grow rapidly and consumption continues to upgrade.
As the "new kinetic energy" of economic development, the growth rate of consumption is lower than expected from the data performance, but in Sheng Laiyun’s view, the transformation and upgrading of the consumer goods market has made new progress.
In May, the total retail sales of social consumer goods reached 2,661.1 billion yuan, a nominal increase of 10.0% year-on-year and 0.76% quarter-on-quarter. From January to May, the total retail sales of consumer goods increased by 10.2% year-on-year. .
"Sales in industries related to the improvement of residents’ consumption quality and quality improvement have maintained rapid growth, and the trend of consumption upgrading continues to appear," Sheng Laiyun said.
For example, automobile sales in May increased by 8.6% year-on-year, 3.5 percentage points faster than that in April, which played an important role in supporting the steady growth of retail sales in that month. In the first five months, the sales of sports and entertainment products nationwide increased by 12.9% year-on-year, and the sales of Chinese and western medicines increased by 14.4% year-on-year.
Lin Tao, a senior statistician of the Department of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation of the National Bureau of Statistics, also affirmed the sales growth of consumption-upgrading commodities, saying that "the sales of new formats, new products and some consumption-upgrading-related commodities maintained rapid growth".
From January to May, online retail sales continued to grow rapidly, with the national online retail sales reaching 1,808.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.7%. Among them, the national online retail sales of physical goods increased by 25.9% year-on-year, the growth rate was 0.3 percentage points faster than that of January-April, and 15.9 percentage points higher than the growth rate of total retail sales of social consumer goods.
industrial structure
The overall stable structure of industrial production is continuously optimized.
At the press conference held on June 13, Sheng Laiyun summed up the overall situation of the national economy operation last month with the words "overall stability, steady progress".
He specifically mentioned that the word "stable" is first manifested in the relatively stable industrial production. In May, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 6%, the same as in April. There have been some positive changes in industrial production. The added value of manufacturing industry increased by 7.2%, up 0.3 percentage points from last month, and the data of industrial electricity consumption rose by 0.3 percentage points.
From the data, the growth rate of service industry continues to be faster than that of industry, which means that the proportion of service industry in GDP continues to increase. At the same time, the industrial structure continues to be optimized, and the growth rate of high-tech industries and advanced equipment manufacturing industries is obviously accelerating, and the proportion is also constantly increasing.
In May, the added value of high-tech industry and equipment manufacturing industry increased by 11.5% and 8.5% respectively year-on-year, and the growth rate was 1.8 and 0.6 percentage points higher than that of last month, 5.5 and 2.5 percentage points faster than that of industries above designated size.
Another data reflecting the operation of the industrial economy is improving synchronously. In May, the PPI (ex-factory price of industrial producers) decreased by 2.8% year-on-year, which was 0.6 percentage points lower than that of the previous month, and the decline narrowed for five consecutive months.
Peking University Economic Research Institute’s prediction of the future trend of industrial product prices shows that the year-on-year decline of PPI should continue to narrow due to the influence of low cardinal utility.
real estate market
The growth rate of sales data of "destocking" commercial housing began to decline
After the "crazy March", the real estate market gradually returned to rationality in May, but the sales data still maintained a rapid growth.
In the first five months, the national commercial housing sales area was 479.54 million square meters, up 33.2% year-on-year, and the growth rate dropped by 3.3 percentage points compared with that in January-April. Among them, the residential sales area increased by 34.2%. The national sales of commercial housing reached 3,677.5 billion yuan, up 50.7% year-on-year, and the growth rate dropped by 5.2 percentage points.
In response to the narrowing of the cumulative growth rate of commercial housing sales data, Yan Yuejin, research director of the think tank center of Yiju Research Institute, told the reporter of Zhongxin.com that "this is related to the current cooling of the property market in second-tier cities". Previously, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and other cities were basically popular. There has been a decline in transactions.
The sustained and rapid growth of sales data has effectively helped the "destocking" of the national property market. At the end of May, the area of commercial housing for sale was 721.69 million square meters, a decrease of 5.21 million square meters compared with the end of April.
Sheng Laiyun said that real estate inventory is the highlight of this year’s destocking task, and real estate inventory has been declining for several months. "The area for sale of commercial housing continues to decrease, and the effect of destocking has begun to show." Li Jiao, senior statistician of the Investment Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said when interpreting real estate data.
In Yan Yuejin’s view, while "destocking", it is even more necessary to be alert to the risk of rapid rise in housing prices. "Especially in some third-and fourth-tier cities, similar to the surrounding areas of big cities such as Kunshan, Wuxi, Dongguan and Langfang, the effect of destocking is good, but the price increase is also obvious, which is the content that needs attention in subsequent destocking." Yan Yuejin said. (End)