Guangzhou (JLC), November 14, 2025--China's economic performance managed to hold steady in October 2025 amid uncertainties and challenges, according to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday.
China's value-added industrial output - a gauge of activity in the manufacturing, mining and utilities sectors - increased by 4.9% year on year and by 0.17% month on month in October. In the first ten months, the industrial output gained 6.1% from a year before.
In the service sector, the production index grew by 4.6% year on year in the month, the NBS data showed. In January-October, the index mounted 5.7% from the same period last year.
Concurrently, retail sales of goods, a key measurement of consumer spending, rose 2.9% year on year to 4.63 trillion yuan, slowing down from the 3.0% growth in September. On a month-on-month comparison, the figure in October ticked up by 0.16%. In the first ten months, the retail sales of goods climbed 4.3% year on year to 41.22 trillion yuan.
The country's foreign trade was largely unchanged in October, with exports and imports diverging. In yuan terms, the total value of imports and exports of goods edged up by 0.1% year on year to about 3.70 trillion yuan. In breakdown, exports slipped by 0.8% year on year to 2.17 trillion yuan, while imports went up by 1.4% to 1.53 trillion yuan.
In January-October, the total value of foreign trade amounted to 37.31 trillion yuan, up 3.6% from the same months last year. Among them, exports swelled by 6.2% to 22.11 trillion yuan, while imports remained roughly stable at 15.19 trillion yuan.
On the contrary, fixed-asset investment - a gauge of expenditures on sectors including infrastructure, property, machinery and equipment - dropped 1.7% year on year to 40.89 trillion yuan in the same months, the NBS data also indicated. The investment decreased by 1.62% month on month in October.
As for the surveyed urban unemployment rate, it averaged out at 5.2% in the first ten months, versus 5.1% in the corresponding period last year. In October alone, the reading came in at 5.1%, a fall of 0.1 percentage points month on month.
