In the January to October 2025 timeframe, China experienced a 1.7% decline in fixed-asset investment year-on-year. This decrease surpassed market predictions, which anticipated a 0.8% drop, and further slipped from a 0.5% fall witnessed during the first nine months of the year. The decline marked the second consecutive monthly downturn, and it was the sharpest since June 2020. This was primarily due to an accelerated reduction in property investment, which plummeted by 14.7% compared to a 13.9% decrease from January to September. Additionally, infrastructure investment fell by 0.1%, reversing from a modest 1.1% growth. Manufacturing growth slowed to 2.7%, down from 4%.
Breaking it down by industry, the growth in investment for the primary sector slowed to 2.9% from 4.6%, and the secondary sector saw a decrease to 4.8% from 6.3%. The tertiary industry faced an even more significant drop, declining by 5.3% compared to a 4.3% fall earlier. If we exclude the property sector, fixed-asset investment rose by 1.7% in the same period, which is a deceleration from a 3% increase in the first nine months. On a month-to-month basis, October saw a fixed-asset investment decline of 1.62%, deepening from a 0.07% drop recorded in September.
