China's retail sales managed to maintain their fast growth last month despite a widespread contraction of consumer demand in some other countries, indicating that China's slowing economy could rely on people's spending to sustain it.

Retail sales grew 20.8 percent last month from a year earlier to 979.1 billion yuan (US$142.9 billion), the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.

Growth eased a little compared to the increases of 22 percent in October and 23.2 percent in September. But compared with other countries, the expansion of China's spending was quite encouraging, some analysts said.

"The growth momentum of people's spending did not slow down as we had expected. It reflected people's confidence in the effect of the government's stimulus measures and the strength of China's economy," said Li Maoyu, an analyst with Changjiang Securities.

In contrast to China's spending, major retailers in the United States reported sales declines of more than 10 percent last month, with the United Kingdom, Japan and other rich countries showing similar figures.

But Citigroup economist Peng Ken warned that although last month's retail sales in China held up well, the country couldn't rule out the possibility of a future slowdown.

"The fears of a global recession can spread quickly and China's retail sales may continue to slow from recent peaks," said Peng. "China should try to stabilize people's expectations of the future and carry out stimulus measures in an effective and timely manner."

Last month, sales of cars in China rose 7.7 percent from a year earlier, down sharply from the previous month's 19.6-percent rise.

Spending in construction and decoration dropped 32.6 percent on an annual basis, slipping even further from the decrease of 14.8 percent in October. But expenditure in the catering industry increased 25.1 percent year on year.

The Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded on Wednesday in Beijing and mapped out the economic blueprint for next year, said China would boost domestic demand and quicken structural reform to sustain the country's growth.

China is planning to spend 4 trillion yuan in the next two years to bolster people's spending.

(Shanghai Daily December 13, 2008)