New growth engines drive the economy

Output in emerging sectors expanding rapidly as consumption patterns change

Anta Sports Products, the Chinese mainland's largest sportswear retailer by market value, last year posted record annual profit for the third consecutive year.

A large part of this came from online sales, with the company collaborating with leading e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD, in addition to its online flagship store.

"We have benefited greatly from the country's consumption upgrading and new sales channels," said Li Ling, Anta's vice-president.

Anta's success mirrors the transformation of China's consumption patterns.

In the first half of this year, although retail sales expanded by 9.4 percent year-on-year, slower than in the first quarter, online sales increased by more than 30 percent.

And online sales are only one of the many new growth engines buttressing the Chinese economy.

In the first half of this year, manufacturing fixed asset investment grew by 6.8 percent year-on-year, compared with 6 percent for all sectors, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Private fixed asset investment increased by 8.4 percent in the same period, 1.2 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Output in some emerging sectors, such as high-tech and equipment manufacturing－backbones of the country's industrial development－have registered significantly faster growth than overall industrial output growth of 6.7 percent in the first six months.

"The higher growth in the high-tech and equipment manufacturing industries indicates that China's industrial structure has continually improved and the innovation capacity of industry has been enhanced," said Qin Hailin, director of the China Center for Information Industry Development's Industrial Economy Institute.

Meanwhile, the service industry has contributed to 60.5 percent of overall GDP growth, compared with 58.5 percent for the whole of last year, indicating solid progress in China's economic restructuring.

Yan Pengcheng, spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a news conference on July 17, a day after the release of major economic data for the first half of this year, "We should note the improvement in the quality (of economic growth)."