NBS data showed industrial profits up 15.7% year-on-year through August, with tech manufacturing profits surging roughly 110%. Shanghai and Shenzhen sold the sector anyway after the holiday, pricing chip-access risk from last week's Trump-Xi summit over the earnings.
East Asia Econ notes that despite the AI-driven electronics surge, Chinese industrial profits in yuan terms have gone sideways for six years. Source
Industrial profits at China's large enterprises rose 15.7% year on year for January through August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday, down from 17.6% growth through July. August alone came in at 4.2%, a sharp drop from July's 11.2%. NBS statistician Yu Weining pointed to the obvious culprit: August 2025 profits had jumped 20.4% as Beijing's anti-involution campaign first squeezed price wars out of steel, solar and EVs, so this year's August comparison is running against an inflated base, not a fresh demand air pocket.
