China’s factory and retail sector activity surged in the first two months of the year, beating expectations, as the economy consolidated its brisk recovery from the coronavirus paralysis of early 2020.
While the impressive set of numbers released on Monday was heavily skewed by the very low base from last year’s significant slump, analysts said they nonetheless showed China’s strong rebound remained intact.
Industrial output rose 35.1 percent in the first two months from a year earlier, up from a 7.3 percent on-year uptick seen in December, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed, stronger than a median forecast for a 30 percent surge in a Reuters poll of analysts.