Photo: Chu Daye/GT

China's dynamic economy, navigating a complex external environment, has maintained solid growth momentum in August, demonstrating strong resilience and vitality, official data showed on Monday.

Key indicators for August, including industrial production, gross retail sales, investment and foreign trade volume, kept on improving, and employment stayed generally stable, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Industrial production rose 5.2 percent year-on-year in August, latest NBS data revealed, with high-tech manufacturing industry leading other sectors with a 9.3 percent growth. And, fixed-asset investment increased 0.5 percent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2025.

Meanwhile, consumer spending, a priority on the government's economic work agenda this year, continued to gain momentum. Retail sales of consumer goods grew 3.4 percent year-on-year in August, while retail sales of services expanded by 5.1 percent in the January-August period.

A package of pro-growth government policies to boost domestic consumption, such as the consumer goods trade-in project and equipment upgrading program, have helped accelerate economic growth, according to NBS.

Manufacturing investment increased by 5.1 percent year-on-year in the first eight months, significantly faster than that of overall investment growth, while investment in equipment and tools grew by 14.4 percent year-on-year.

Retail sales of travel consulting and rental services, transportation services, and cultural, sports and leisure services all posted relatively fast growth, according to the NBS data.

Employment was generally stable. In August, the urban surveyed unemployment rate came in at 5.3 percent, 0.1 percentage points higher than that of the previous month but still within the annual ceiling of around 5.5 percent.

NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said the overall economy in August was stable with steady progress made in industrial transformation and upgrading, while marked achievements were scored in high-quality development with the synergy of the macro policies.

The spokesperson noted that there are many unstable and uncertain factors in external environment, and China's national economic development still faces multiple risks and challenges.

However, Fu said that, in the first eight months, key indicators including industrial production, index of services production, gross retail sales and foreign trade growth were maintained steady compared with a month earlier. The trend of generally stable economic growth remains unchanged.

"Looking forward, we must fully implement macro policies, focus on keeping employment, businesses, market and expectations stable, and deepen reform and opening up and innovation, so as to foster steady and healthy economic development," Fu noted.

Sun Chuanwang, a professor at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Monday that the August data has underlined that the foundation for economic recovery and improvement still needs to be consolidated, with more efforts to drive scientific and technological innovation and boosting consumption, as well as in cultivating new quality productive forces and effectively releasing the potential of domestic demand.

"The importance of maintaining policy continuity and stability in the second half of the year has become more prominent," Sun said. "It is also necessary to enhance the flexibility and predictability of policies, so as to fully release policies' effects in the future."

According to the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee held at the end of July, which set the tone for the country's economic policy approach in the second half of the year, macro policies should be intensified in a sustained and timely manner. It urged rigorous implementation of a more proactive fiscal policy and a moderately loose monetary policy to strengthen their effectiveness, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Global Times