China's wholesale, retail sectors achieve steady growth in first three quarters

BEIJING -- China's wholesale and retail sectors posted solid growth in the first nine months of 2025, providing sound support for expanding domestic demand in the country, the commerce ministry said on Monday.

From January to September, the added value of China's wholesale and retail trade grew by 5.6 percent from a year earlier to reach 10.5 trillion yuan ($1.48 trillion), which accounted for 10.3 percent of the country's gross domestic product, said an official with the ministry, quoting data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

During this period, profits of key commodity markets in the wholesale industry expanded by 8.2 percent year-on-year, while profits of industrial consumer goods markets increased by 17.9 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

Looking at the retail industry, retail sales of goods reached 32.5 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of 2025, an increase of 4.6 percent year-on-year.

Online retail sales in China's rural areas registered a 7.7 percent year-on-year increase in the January-September period, while sales of agricultural products via e-commerce platforms grew by 9.6 percent.

China has seen about 126 million new home appliances sold under its consumer goods trade-in program this year, the ministry noted.