Civil aviation sector sees steady growth in H1

China's civil aviation industry recorded steady growth in the first half of 2026, with 380 million passenger trips, up one percent year on year, according to data released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on Wednesday.

During the period, the industry's total transport turnover reached 83.37 billion ton-kilometers, marking a year-on-year growth of 6.4 percent. Cargo and mail transport volume rose by 6 percent year on year, totaling 5.073 million tons.

In terms of operational performance, the sector logged 7.146 million flight hours and completed 2.683 million flights. The rate of incidents attributed to human factors dropped by 20.6 percent per 10,000 flight hours compared with a year earlier. Meanwhile, flight punctuality remained high, with an on-time performance rate of 93.5 percent.

China's real estate market witnessed positive changes in the first half of the year as supportive property policies continued to take effect, an official with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday.

With home prices in major cities stabilizing, unsold housing inventory declined and second-hand home transactions remained active, Mao Shengyong, deputy director of the NBS, said at a press conference in Beijing, adding that policy adjustments and optimization measures introduced across the country have gradually delivered results, contributing to an improving property market.

Data showed that since March, the month-on-month sales prices of both newly built commercial homes and second-hand homes in first-tier cities have risen for four consecutive months, Mao said.

The inventory of unsold commercial housing also continued to decline. By the end of June, the floor space of unsold commercial housing nationwide had fallen 0.9 percent year on year, with the pace of decline widening by 0.5 percentage points from the previous month, he said.

The inventory has registered year-on-year declines for four straight months.

And the second-hand housing market remained active. In the first half of the year, the floor space of online-registered second-hand home transactions increased 10.2 percent year on year, 2.5 percentage points faster than the growth recorded in the January-May period.

"As China's real estate market continues to readjust, profound changes are taking place in both the structure and overall scale of property transactions. The traditional market pattern, which was driven mainly by sales of newly built homes, is rapidly shifting toward one featuring both new and second-hand home transactions. Second-hand home sales have become an important part of the housing market. According to online registration data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the transaction area of second-hand homes is now roughly equivalent to that of newly built homes. When combining online-registered transactions of both new and second-hand homes, total transaction volume in the past three months has recorded positive growth continuously. Overall, the supply-demand relationship in the real estate market is gradually improving, and market expectations have continued to recover," said Mao.