Profit of China’s industrial firms declined 3.6 percent year on year in the first 11 months of the year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed Tuesday.
Industrial firms with annual main business revenue of at least 20 million yuan (about 2.88 million U.S. dollars) saw their combined profits reach about 7.72 trillion yuan in the period, the NBS said.
“In November, industrial production slowed down, and the pressure on business operations increased due to factors such as the resurgence of the epidemic and the weak demand, but the profit structure continued to improve,” said senior NBS statistician Zhu Hong.
If excluding sharp declines in a few enterprises, such as steel and oil processing enterprises and two leading vaccine companies that earned remarkably high profits a year ago, the overall profit growth rate will be 6.6 percent in the January-November period this year, Zhu said.Profits of China’s industrial firms declined 3.6 percent.
A total of 20 out of 41 major industries saw growth in profits in the period, up from 19 in the first 10 months.
The oil and gas exploitation sector saw profits jump 1.13 times from the same period last year, while the electric and heat power production and supply and the coal mining and washing sectors reported profit increases of 47.2 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
In the first 11 months, the combined revenues of industrial firms sustained growth, rising 6.7 percent year on year to 123.96 trillion yuan, the NBS data showed.
President Xi Jinping wants China’s agricultural technology to accelerate efforts to achieve self-reliance in this field, identifying seed development and core equipment among areas to focus on, state media reported. Xi Jinping wants an acceleration in China’s agricultural technology.
“It is necessary to keep an eye on the frontiers of the world’s agricultural science and technology,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying at the central rural work conference held in Beijing over Friday and Saturday. Xi Jinping’s China urges the agricultural sector to “vigorously improve” its science and technology, with more efficient innovation. Xi urged the sector to address issues with innovation.
Although China’s agricultural output is the largest in the world, only 10% of its total land area can be cultivated. China’s arable land, which represents 10% of the total arable land in the world, supports over 20% of the world’s population. Of this approximately 1.4 million square kilometers of arable land, only about 1.2% (116,580 square kilometers) permanently supports crops and 525,800 square kilometers are irrigated. China’s agricultural land is divided into approximately 200 million households, with an average land allocation of just 0.65 hectares (1.6 acres).
China’s limited space for farming has been a problem throughout its history, leading to chronic food shortages and famine. While the production efficiency of farmland has grown over time, efforts to expand to the west and the north have met with limited success, as such land is generally colder and drier than traditional farmlands to the east. Since the 1950s, farm space has also been pressured by the increasing land needs of industry and cities.
