China's economy is performing steadily and showing signs of improvement, the latest official data showed on Tuesday.
In May, the utilization rate of port facilities nationwide rose by about 9 percentage points year on year, while port logistics demand remained robust, indicating that the resilience of foreign trade continues to strengthen, showed the data released by the State Information Center under China's top economic planner -- the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
The data also show that in May the consumer market continued to improve steadily, the pace of investment in new and high-tech sectors accelerated, and the innovative vitality of enterprises was unleashed at a faster rate.
The data indicated that in May, the total amount of offline consumer payments went up 2.4 percent year over year, with the growth rate 0.7 percentage point higher than that of April.
The year-on-year growth rates in goods consumption and service consumption reached 3.3 percent and 1.2 percent respectively, up 0.6 percentage point and 0.8 percentage point from April.
In terms of investment, capital investment in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence and humanoid robots surged nearly fivefold year on year in May.
The total value of winning bids for infrastructure projects related to computing power, data and networks also roughly doubled year on year.
In the month, corporate innovation was gaining momentum as well. The number of patent grants in China's strategic emerging industries rose by 19.7 percent year on year in May, with the growth rate higher by 2.2 percentage points over the previous month.
The transition of innovation from laboratories to production lines was gathering pace, continuously supporting industrial upgrading and quality improvements.
Indicators show China's economy in stable growth
