China's retail sales continued to register strong growth in August, as people's expectations for the future remain high.

Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that retail sales rose a year-on-year 13.1 percent to 426.3 billion yuan (US$51.4 billion) in August.

The growth rate was close to that of July's, which stood at 13.2 percent.

Retail sales, an important driving force of China's economy, rose a year-on-year 13.9 percent in June, 17.8 percent in May and 13.2 percent in April, earlier figures show.

For the first eight months, retail sales rose a year-on-year 12.9 percent, the statistics bureau said yesterday.

Zhu Jianfang, an economist at China Securities, said August's retail figure was encouraging.

"This suggests the country's retail sales market has begun to pick up gradually," he said.

The good retail situation would continue in coming months, he said.

Qi Jingmei, a senior economist with the State Information Center, agreed retail sales grew strongly during the past several months.

"Retail for the whole year is likely to grow faster than the 12 percent rate predicted at the beginning of this year," she said.

Qi said the good retail situation at present was mainly because of stable income increases for rural and urban residents.

Per capita cash income of rural residents for the first half of the year rose a year-on-year 16.1 percent to 1,345 yuan (US$162), while per capita disposable income of urban residents rose 11.9 percent to 4,815 yuan (US$580).

"With more money in hand, people are willing to increase spending to improve their lives," Qi said. "This is what the government likes to see."

The news is also still positive for further development of the retail market, she said.

According to a recent survey by the payments solutions company MasterCard International, Chinese consumers are very optimistic about employment, economy, regular income, the stock market and quality of life.

The government also has further plans to increase income for rural residents, as well as low and medium-income urban residents, Qi said.

Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute, said that if China's retail sales could grow more than 10 percent each year, it would be good enough to maintain sustainable economic development in coming years.

Zhang Liqun, a senior researcher with the State Council's Development Research Center, said China is capable of maintaining a relatively high retail sales growth in the next two decades.

"People's huge appetite for large consumption items such as houses and cars will keep retail sales growing at more than 10 percent annually in the next 20 years," he said.

Retail sales would become a leading force in the country's future economic development, he said.

Stronger payment capacity built up during past decades has enabled many people to increase consumption, including cars and houses.

Figures from the statistics bureau suggest that an average urban family owned 223,000 yuan (US$26,867) worth of total assets in 2002, of which 78,000 yuan (US$9,398) were financial assets.

About 40 percent of 140 million urban families owned financial assets worth more than 150,000 yuan (US$18,072), the bureau said.

"These families have played and will continue to play an important role in China's retail market," Zhang said.

However, China's present consumption demand was still weak, when compared with fixed asset investment, Qi said.

The country could not rely merely on investment for long-term economic growth, she said.

"If there is no strong consumption demand, an oversupply in production resulting from investment will have a big negative impact on the economy," she said.

(China Daily September 15, 2004)