In August, the national economy was running smoothly on the whole.

"From the August monthly indicators, industrial production slowed down slightly, service industry growth accelerated, while market sales remained stable, investment slowed down slightly." On September 16, August macroeconomic operation data came out as scheduled. Fu Linghui, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics, summarized at the press conference that macroeconomic operation maintained a steady and progressive development trend from January to August.

Industrial structure adjustment and optimization

Industrial production stabilization slowed down in August. The value-added of industries above scale increased by 4.4% year on year, down 0.4 percentage points from July. Among them, the value added of the three traditional industries showed a slowdown trend.

"There are some downward pressure factors in the economy itself. We know that the international environment is more complex and the domestic structural adjustment is at a critical stage." Fu Linghui confessed. However, he said that climate factors such as typhoon Lichma in August also had some impact on industrial production in some areas. If such factors are excluded, industrial production will remain relatively stable in August. Wang Jun, chief economist of Central Plains Bank, added that weak terminal demand lowered the value of industrial growth. At the same time, industrial enterprises increased environmental supervision and increased environmental protection costs of products, which also led to a reduction in the value-added of traditional industrial production to a certain extent. It is noteworthy that the data show that the value-added of high-tech manufacturing industry increased by 6.1% year-on-year in August, which is 1.7 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate. Among them, the manufacturing industries of medical instruments and instruments, medicine, electronics and communication equipment developed rapidly, increasing by 11.8%, 8.3% and 5.4% respectively.

"At present, the gross domestic product is stable, and the trend of structural upgrading and development is sustained." Fu Linghui pointed out that the value added of industries above scale increased by 5.6% from January to August, and the growth of high-tech manufacturing industry reached 8.4%, which was significantly faster than the growth rate of all industries.

Fu Linghui said that from the next stage, the development trend of industrial upgrading is still continuing, and a series of policy effectiveness continues to show. This year's large-scale tax reduction and fee reduction will provide a good support for enterprises. At the same time, the counter-cyclical adjustment is intensifying, and the recent promotion of the formation of market-oriented loan quotation rate mechanism and the implementation of the directional benchmarking policy have provided good conditions for the development of industrial enterprises.

Sales growth of consumer upgrading commodities is similar to that of the production side, and the growth of consumer market tends to be stable. In August, the total retail sales of social consumer goods were 33896 billion yuan, up 7.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate fell 0.1 percentage points from last month. Among them, the retail sales of consumer goods excluding automobiles increased by 9.3%, 0.5 percentage points faster than last month.

"In August, when China entered the recovery period of production and sales in the automobile market, the ring ratio began to show growth, but the growth rate was not obvious, and the impact of overdraft on the five-car promotion in the first half of the year had not completely disappeared." The relevant person in charge of CAAC pointed out. When Zhang Min, a statistician in the Department of Foreign Trade and Economics of the National Bureau of Statistics, interpreted the consumption data, he pointed out that in August, the sales growth of upgraded commodities accelerated. Among them, cosmetics, cultural and office supplies, household appliances, audio-visual equipment and communications equipment increased by 12.8%, 19.8%, 4.2% and 3.5% respectively over the same period last year, and the growth rate was 3.4%, 5.3, 1.2 and 2.5% faster than that in July.< p> and with the transformation and upgrading of consumption mode, online consumption is growing rapidly. From January to August, online retail sales in China totaled 6439.3 billion yuan, an increase of 16.8% over the same period last year. Among them, online retail sales of physical goods amounted to 5074.5 billion yuan, an increase of 20.8%, accounting for 19.4% of the total retail sales of consumer goods.

"Since the international financial crisis, after structural adjustment, domestic demand has become the main driving force of domestic economic growth." Fu Linghui said that in the first half of this year, domestic demand contributed nearly 80% to economic growth, and China's consumption growth was in a very rapid stage of demand upgrading and expansion. The investment structure is also being optimized at a time when infrastructure investment is accelerating significantly production and demand structure is continuously adjusted. The data show that the national fixed assets investment increased by 5.5% from January to August, including investment in high-tech industries increased by 13%, investment in education, culture, sports and entertainment increased by 19% and 15.1%, respectively, which are significantly faster than the growth of all investment. It is worth mentioning that infrastructure investment increased by 4.2% in August, 0.4 percentage points higher than last month, and became the main driving force to support the growth of tertiary industry.

Fu Linghui pointed out that the growth of infrastructure investment was not high in the early stage, mainly due to the large-scale tax cuts and fee cuts this year, which affected local government revenue to a certain extent. In the face of this situation, the central government has increased its support to further increase the issuance of special bonds, and will issue some new special bonds ahead of schedule next year, which is conducive to supporting the growth of infrastructure investment. At the same time, under the regulation of "no speculation in housing" this year, the policy of real estate was released cautiously, and the pressure trend of real estate investment remained unchanged as a whole. Beijing Business Daily reporters found that after April "Xiaoyangchun", real estate investment has been declining for four consecutive months. From January to August, investment in real estate development increased by 10.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate dropped by 0.1 percentage points from January to July. Yan Yuejin, director of research at the think tank center of Yiju Research Institute, pointed out that the downturn of investment was due to the negative view of the property market in the later period and the obvious pessimism. Housing enterprises were relatively conservative in their investment in development and were particularly vigilant against capital pressure.

"However, under the downward pressure of the real estate market, we should also see that the effect of the reduction will be released one after another, especially in view of the possible adverse effects including quantitative easing in Europe, the stock market or the adverse effects.