Caixin New Economy Index rises for third straight month

The contribution of biotechnology, advanced equipment manufacturing and other emerging higher value-added industries to the Chinese economy rose for the third-straight month in August, according to the latest Mastercard Caixin BBD China New Economy Index (NEI) released Saturday. So-called “new economy” industries accounted for 33.3% of total economic inputs used to make goods and services last month, the research report found. The August reading marked the third consecutive month of increase after the index dropped to 28.2% in May. It was higher than April’s 31.8% and the same as March’s figure. Caixin’s NEI index includes three sub-indexes that measure the labor, capital and technology inputs in 10 emerging sectors and calculates what share they respectively make up of the total inputs in all of China’s industries. The gain in August was mainly driven by nascent industries contributing more to the share of capital input.