China’s retail sales in November grew year-on-year by 10.1%. This has again marked the highest retail sales growth seen since May and is of course well above November’s 0.5% decline in inflation. China’s retail sales growth has now come in higher than inflation during each of the last eleven months. Prior to these last eleven months, China's retail sales growth had come in lower than inflation for four straight months.
Overall, it remains very significant to us that Chinese consumers continue to buy more goods than they did a year ago. The same cannot unfortunately be said about consumers in many other major economies however. In Europe, for example, each of the last twenty-one months have seen European consumers buy less goods than they did one year prior.
Among the specific retail categories we monitor, of note in China though is that furniture sales continue to contract on a year-on-year basis. This remains a direct result of the ongoing weakness in China’s housing market and is an issue we have continued to discuss in Commodore's Weekly China Reports. Furniture sales in China most recently fell year-on-year in November by 3%. Furniture sales have now contracted on a year-on-year basis for eight straight months.
