Poster: China's industrial output up 6.3% in first two months

China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, went up 6.3% year on year in the first two months of 2026, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on March 16, 2026.

The pace was 1.1 percentage points faster than the level in December last year, according to the NBS. In February alone, the industrial output grew 0.83 percent from January.

The industrial output is used to measure the activity of large enterprises, each with an annual main business turnover of at least 20 million yuan (about 2.9 million U.S. dollars).

A breakdown of the data showed that the mining sector's value-added output increased by 6.1 percent year on year in the two-month period, while that of the manufacturing sector grew by 6.6 percent. The value-added output of the electricity, heat, gas, water production and supply sectors rose by 4.7 percent.

NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui attributed the growth to improving domestic demand, stronger export momentum, and the increasingly visible effects of macroeconomic policies.

The equipment manufacturing sector has been a particularly strong contributor to overall industrial growth, according to Fu. In the first two months of the year, value-added output in that sector rose 9.3 percent, accounting for 47.4 percent of total growth.

Innovation has played a greater leading role, with emerging sectors increasingly supporting production growth, he said. Value-added output of high-tech manufacturing enterprises grew 13.1 percent year on year in the January-February period, while the digital product manufacturing sector expanded 8.8 percent, both considerably outpacing overall growth.