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The profit of large Chinese industrial companies fell last month since October, according to official data, in the last sign of economic stress to arise in the midst of trade tensions with the US.
The profit between companies with an income of more than RMB20MN ($ 2.8 million) fell by 9.1 percent in May last year, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on Friday.
The lecture showed a steady cumulative profit growth from 1.4 percent from January to April winding to a decrease of 1.1 percent in May.
The data will contribute to worries about the process of the Chinese economy, which had had difficulty getting speed under the weight of a delay of a property and a deflatory background, even before a trade war with the US in April escalated.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that a tariff weather barracks with China had agreed earlier this month in London was signed. Under the deal, the countries were agreed to climb taxes to 145 percent, but tensions remain about the Chinese rare export of the earth and the export controls of American technology.
The slump in industrial profit followed other recent signs of weakness in the second largest economy in the world, which contributed to the pressure on Chinese policy makers.
Data released last week showed a leap in the retail trade, but a weaker growth in industrial production in May.
Production purchasing managers indices, a measure of factory activity, also came into contraction in the past two months, while exports to the US decreased the most since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemie.
New house prices also staggered in May, after previous signs of improvement in the largest cities in China.
Deflatie, a major challenge for the Chinese economy for years, continued to exist the fourth consecutive month in May. The consumer price index was 0.1 percent lower, while producer prices have fallen the most since 2023.
Yu Weining, a statistician at the NBS, said that the fall in industrial profit was influenced by several factors, including “insufficiently effective demand” and “falling industrial product prices”.
Limp consumer expenditure has become a central point of the government, in which President Xi Jinping emphasizes the need to stimulate domestic demand at the end of last year. Authorities focus on GDP growth of approximately 5 percent for 2025, in line with last year.
The government has also launched a trade -in program for products such as household appliances in an attempt to stimulate demand that was expanded this year. The NBS pointed to the effects of the policy and said that profit in equipment and special equipment industries had grown by 10.6 percent and 7.1 percent year after year respectively.
But in a sign of pressure in the very competitive automotive sector, the profit of car manufacturers fell by 11.9 percent in the first five months.
Data visualization by Haohsiang Ko in Hong Kong
