China's industrial capacity utilisation at five-yr high

BEIJING, Feb 18 (Xinhua): China's industrial capacity utilization hit 77 per cent in 2017, the highest level in nearly five years, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The rate is 3.7 percentage points higher than the 2016 level, the NBS has said.

China's industrial output expanded 6.6 percent in 2017, up from 6 percent in 2016, with the pace of growth accelerating for the first time since 2011, according to NBS data.

Wen Jianwu, head of NBS's department of industrial statistics, said China's industrial economy witnessed a stronger and more stable development, as well as improvement in structure and profitability in 2017, laying a solid foundation for high-quality development.

He also pointed out that China must firmly push forward the supply-side structural reform and seek economic transformation toward high-quality development, as it still faces complicated external and internal conditions, and long-standing problems like overcapacity.

Meanwhile, China has hosted 214 million tourists in the first three days of the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, up 9.7 per cent from the same period last year, the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) said Saturday.

Tourism revenue rose 9.9 per cent to 258.2 billion yuan (about 40.69 billion U.S. dollars) in the three-day period, the CNTA said.

On Saturday alone, some 870 million visitor trips were made across the country, CNTA data showed.

A total of 3.85 million passenger trips were made on Chinese railways Friday, the first day of the week-long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, up 8.4 per cent from the same day last year, according to the China Railway Corporation (CRC), which expects 6.89 million trips to be made on Saturday.

Short railway trips for family visits or travelling have become popular among Chinese as the country's high-speed railway network continues to expand, said the CRC.

Some 385 million Chinese are expected to travel around during the holiday spanning from Feb. 15 to 21, representing an increase of 12 per cent, the CNTA forecast earlier this month.

China earned 5.4 trillion yuan from tourism in 2017, an increase of 15.1 per cent.