BEIJING - China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, went up 5.9 percent year-on-year in the first two months of 2025, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.

In February alone, the industrial output grew 0.51 percent from January.

The industrial output is used to measure the activity of large enterprises each with an annual main business turnover of at least 20 million yuan ($2.79 million). 

Fixed-asset investment

Monday's data also showed China's fixed-asset investment went up 4.1 percent year-on-year in the first two months of this year, 0.9 percentage points higher than the full-year growth rate of 2024.

The investment totaled 5.2619 trillion yuan during the January-February period, the bureau said.

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Investment in infrastructure construction rose 5.6 percent from a year ago during the period, and manufacturing investment increased 9 percent, according to the bureau's data.

Excluding the property sector, the country's fixed-asset investment rose 8.4 percent in the first two months. Investment in property development fell 9.8 percent year-on-year during the period.

Retail sales 

The country's retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country's consumption strength, climbed 4 percent year-on-year in the first two months, the data showed.

Total retail sales of consumer goods reached over 8.37 trillion yuan from January to February, according to the bureau.

Retail sales of consumer goods, excluding automobiles, reached over 7.68 trillion yuan, registering a year-on-year growth of 4.8 percent.

Urban unemployment

The official data also indicated that in the first two months, the surveyed urban unemployment rate on average in China stood at 5.3 percent.

Property investment

China's investment in property development decreased 9.8 percent year-on-year from Janurary to February. The drop narrowed by 0.8 percentage points compared to the full year of 2024, the bureau said.

Total property investment in this period stood at 1.072 trillion yuan in the two-month period, the bureau's data showed. Investment in residential buildings came in at 805.6 billion yuan, down 9.2 percent year-on-year.

New commercial housing sales shrank 5.1 percent year-on-year in terms of floor area to 107.46 million square meters in January and February, a reduction of 7.8 percentage points smaller than last year's full-year decline.

In terms of value, new commercial housing sales dropped 2.6 percent year-on-year to nearly 1.026 trillion yuan, with the decrease narrowing by 14.5 percentage points.

The property development climate index, compiled by the bureau, came in at 93.8 points in February.

Home prices

On the real estate market, commercial home prices dipped slightly in China's 70 large and medium-sized cities in February amid Spring Festival sales off-season and other factors, according to the bureau's data.

Prices of new homes in first-tier cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, increased 0.1 percent from a month ago, the data showed.

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In the second-tier cities, prices of new homes stayed flat from the January level, while prices of resold homes dropped by 0.4 percent.