China’s Industrial Profits Post First Annual Decline in Four Years

A worker with molten iron flowing up in the iron-smelting workshop at the Chengde Steel Plant in Chengde City, Hebei Province, China on Oct. 11, 2007. Feng Li/Getty Images

BEIJING—China’s industrial firms posted their first annual decline in profits in four years in 2019, as the slowest economic growth in almost 30 years and a bruising trade war with the United States hit the country’s factories.

Official data released on Feb. 3 showed industrial profits declining 3.3 percent on an annual basis to 6.1996 trillion yuan ($897.96 billion) in 2019, compared with the 2.1 percent dip in the January-November period, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website. It was first full-year decline since 2015 when profits fell 2.3 percent.