BEIJING: China’s shipbuilding industry recorded sound development in the first eight months, with robust growth in output, new orders and holding orders.
This has helped the sector emerge as a formidable force propelling the country’s industrial expansion, said a government official.
Fuelled by technological accumulation and industrial upgrading, China saw new orders – a major indicator within the shipbuilding industry account for 68.8% of the global market share during the eight-month period, said the Industry and Information Technology Ministry (MIIT).
The ministry said China’s shipbuilding output accounted for 49% of the world’s total between January and August, while the sector’s holding orders represented 53.9% of the global total.
Speaking at a news conference in Beijing, Tao Qing, head of the MIIT’s bureau of operation monitoring and coordination, said these encouraging figures will inject new impetus into China’s foreign trade and economic growth.
In August, the added value of China’s industrial enterprises above a designated size grew 4.5% year-on-year (y-o-y), with the growth rate accelerating by 0.8 percentage point compared to the previous month, government data showed.
China also witnessed a surge in the production of service robots, up 73.7% y-o-y in August, while civil aircraft production soared 33.3%.
Meanwhile, production of goods such as photovoltaic cells and lithium-ion batteries for automobiles exhibited substantial y-o-y growth, with increases of 77.8% and 31.5%, respectively.
Tao said the equipment manufacturing industry has been the primary driver of industrial growth this year, with notable momentum in the development of high-end products.
“Based on high-frequency data related to employment and electricity usage that the MIIT has been monitoring since September, it is evident that industrial production has shown a stable and upward trend in both y-o-y and month-on-month comparisons,” she said.
In the first eight months, 27 of the 41 major industrial categories recorded y-o-y increases in added value.
Among the 10 pillar manufacturing sectors, seven achieved growth rates surpassing the national average, the MIIT said. — China Daily/ANN