New Indicator Shows China’s Consumers Are Spending — on Services

Amid the gloom of China’s economic slowdown, there are some bright spots. A new data series released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday showed that in the first seven months of the year, consumer spending on services like education and leisure rose at almost triple the pace of overall retail sales.

Retail sales of services jumped 20.3% year-on-year in the January to July period compared with 7.3% growth for overall retail sales, NBS data show. The bureau did not provide a monetary amount for retail sales of services and did not provide a breakdown of growth by month, but cumulative growth data will be published from now on, NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui said at a press briefing on Tuesday. Total retail sales rose 2.5% year-on-year in July to 3.7 trillion yuan ($508 billion), slipping from 3.1% growth in June.