China’s industrial profits rose 0.6% in 2025 from a year earlier, snapping three consecutive years of declines as manufacturing output expanded despite weak domestic demand.
The pace of growth accelerated from 0.1% in the January-to-November period, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
The recovery last year was driven by policy intervention, particularly Beijing’s campaign against aggressive price undercutting, and companies’ efforts to expand overseas, said Tianchen Xu, a senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Industrial profits climbed 5.3% in December from a year earlier, marking the best performance since September when earnings surged 21.6%. Profits had faltered in the prior two months, falling 5.5% in October and 13.1% in November.
In December, China’s factory activity returned to growth after eight straight months of contraction, in part thanks to pre-holiday stockpiling ahead of the Lunar New Year in February, an official at the statistics bureau said.
