Guangzhou (JLC), August 15, 2025--China's key economic indicators suggested that the economy maintained a steady development momentum in July 2025, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
China's value-added industrial output - a gauge of activity in the manufacturing, mining and utilities sectors - increased by 5.7% year on year and by 0.38% month on month in July. In the first seven months, the industrial output gained 6.3% from a year before.
The service sector grew fast in the month, with the service production index expanding 5.8% year on year, the NBS data showed. In January-July, the index mounted 5.9% from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, retail sales of goods, a key measurement of consumer spending, rose 3.7% year on year to 3.88 trillion yuan in July, slowing down from the 4.8% growth in June. On a month-on-month comparison, however, the figure in July slipped by 0.14%. In the first seven months, the retail sales of goods climbed 4.8% year on year to 28.42 trillion yuan.
In yuan terms, the total value of imports and exports of goods stood at about 3.91 trillion yuan in the month, up 6.7% year on year. Among them, exports moved up by 8.0% year on year to 2.31 trillion yuan, and imports swelled by 4.8% to 1.60 trillion yuan.
In January-July, the total value of imports and exports of goods amounted to 25.70 trillion yuan, up 3.5% from the same months last year. Among them, exports increased by 7.3% to 15.31 trillion yuan, while imports decreased by 1.6% to 10.39 trillion yuan.
At the same time, fixed-asset investment - a gauge of expenditures on sectors including infrastructure, property, machinery and equipment - inflated by 1.6% year on year to 28.82 trillion yuan, the NBS data also indicated.
As for the surveyed urban unemployment rate, it averaged out at 5.2% in the period, versus 5.1% in the corresponding period of last year. In July alone, the reading came in at 5.2%, a rise of 0.2 percentage points month on month.
