BEIJING, June 18 (Agencies): China's May economic data suggested overall economic resilience.
A glimpse into the physical indicators may provide more details of the positive changes taking place in the economic picture.
Growth in energy consumption, freight traffic, and producer prices all picked up last month, pointing to a firming real economy and progress in structural transformation.
In May, China's industrial electricity use increased 10.8 per cent from a year ago, picking up from the April level of 7.3 percent, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
"This reflects stronger industrial production activities," said Wen Jianwu, head of NBS's department of industrial statistics.
Meanwhile, freight volume, an indicator of goods production and consumption, increased 8.5 per cent year on year last month. Railway freight in particular jumped 11.8 per cent, 10.4 per cent higher than the growth in April.
Last month also saw stronger demand for industrial products, which pushed up the producer price index (PPI), a measure of industrial product inflation, by 4.1 per cent year on year, the highest growth in four months.
Niu Li, an economist with the State Information Center, said physical indicators like energy use and freight traffic can be seen as leading economic indicators.
Data from some less official sources has also showed encouraging signs.
Sales by China's major excavator producers grew sharply by 71.3 per cent year on year in May, according to the China Construction Machinery Association.
At Sany Heavy Industry Co., Ltd., a heavy machinery manufacturer, the working hours of heavy equipment including mixing stations, pumping trucks, and hoisting equipment was on the rise.
In the first five months of this year, Sany's cranes worked 13.9 per cent longer compared with the same period in 2017 as expansion in manufacturing investment has kept machines busy.
This was in line with official investment figures. NBS data showed that fixed-asset investment in manufacturing climbed 5.2 per cent in the first five months, up from 4.8 per cent for January-April.
Continued expansion in manufacturing investment provides evidence of China's restructuring progress, as manufacturing upgrading is part of the country's ongoing structural reform.
Amid efforts to drive innovation, the output of China's high-tech and equipment manufacturing sectors substantially outpaced last month's industrial average.
For the service sector, China's Index of Services Production went up 8.1 per cent last month.
Modern emerging service industries such as the internet industry contributing up to 56.8 per cent to the service sector growth, according to the NBS.
In another sign of booming new businesses, electricity consumed by the software and information technology industry jumped 66.05 per cent year on year in the January-May period.
NBS spokesperson Mao Shengyong said at a press conference earlier this week that the country's supply side structural reform had prompted robust emerging sectors and sustained growth in the broader economy.
Meanwhile, Google will invest more than half a billion dollars in China's second-largest e-commerce company JD.com as part of a move to expand retail services around the world, the companies said Monday.
The announcement comes as US giant is pushing Google Shopping, a platform allowing customers to compare prices between different sellers, which poses a challenge to Amazon.
The firms will marry JD's supply chain and logistics experience with Google technology to create "next generation" personalised retail in regions including Southeast Asia, the US and Europe, the joint statement said.
"This partnership with Google opens up a broad range of possibilities to offer a superior retail experience to consumers throughout the world," JD.com's chief strategy officer Jianwen Liao said.
