China’s industrial profits plunge at the start of 2023 as demand lags in the Covid slowdown

Profits at industrial companies in China plunged in the first two months of the year as factories had yet to fully recover from a slowdown caused by Covid and prices continued to fall.

Industrial profits in the January-February period fell 22.9% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. For the whole of 2022, the profit fell by 4% from the previous year.