China’s Economy Shows Uneven Growth as Retail Sales Decline

China’s economic landscape exhibited signs of disparity in May, marked by a decrease in retail sales for the first time in over three years and a downturn in investment, while industrial output witnessed an uptick in pace. The official data released on Tuesday underscored a distinguishable dual-speed expansion in the world’s second-largest economy. While factories benefited from robust export figures, domestic demand weakened amid an extended property market slump. Retail sales, a pivotal indicator of consumption, experienced a 0.6% decline in May according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This reversal from April’s 0.2% rise and deviation from the…