Chinese industrial firms extended this year’s earnings surge, suggesting resilience in the world’s second-largest economy endures even amid slowing factory output and investment, Bloomberg reports. Industrial profits increased 24% in August from a year earlier, the most in four years, compared with the 16.5% pace a month earlier, the statistics bureau said Wednesday. Profits in the first eight months of the year climbed 21.6% from a year earlier, with statistics officials attributing the jump to faster producer-price inflation and lower costs. “This reflects a positive outcome of supply-side reforms that aim to take out overcapacity,” said Iris Pang, an economist at ING Groep NV in Hong Kong. “Meantime, costs are declining as prices of some materials head down.” Sustained profitability offers policy makers room to rein in excessive industrial capacity and curb speculative borrowing ahead of the key Party Congress next month. Leaders also must balance reform with growth, which showed signs of faltering for a second month in August.
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