China’s industrial output slowed again in November, official data showed Thursday, as authorities press on with their fight against smog by clamping down on polluting heavy industries.
Output at factories and workshops expanded 6.1 percent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, against 6.2 percent in October and in line with forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey.
In some northern cities, the government has forced steel factories and smelters to cut production — with some running at half capacity — in a drive to clean up the country’s notoriously heavy winter smog.
Other enterprises have faced cuts in their natural gas supply as China lurches from supply issues after rapidly transitioning its population away from coal-fired winter heating.
The drastic measures are working, with Greenpeace saying air quality in Beijing last month was considerably better than any other November since 2013. “The national economy has maintained the momentum of stable growth,” said NBS spokesman Mao Shengyong.
“But we should also see that there are still many outside risks and variations, which pose relatively big challenges to high-quality development.”
His comments come at a time of uncertainty about the global trade outlook with US President Donald Trump threatening to review numerous deals with other countries and sometimes accusing China of killing American jobs.
Published in Daily Times, December 15th 2017.