China Retail Sales Disappoint With 2.5% Growth in August

China’s retail sales grew only 2.5 percent in August year-on-year, impacted by the country’s dealing with outbreaks of Covid-19 over the summer months, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

This rate of growth comes in well below the 7 percent forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll and much lower than the 8.5 percent growth seen in July.

Mainland China had controlled a late July outbreak of the highly contagious delta variant by mid-August, but under Beijing’s “zero tolerance” policy, that containment came at the cost of restricting travel and local lockdowns in some places during a significant portion of the summer holidays.

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