Visually look at the latest situation of China's total retail sales of consumer goods

In the National Bureau of Statistics data network, I downloaded dataon the total retail sales of consumer goods in the country from May 2017 to May2018. The downloaded data includes data on total retail sales of consumer goodsclassified by towns and villages, as well as data on retail sales and cateringrevenue by type of consumption, and corresponding to the monthly total retailsales of consumer goods, the growth rate from the same month of the previousyear and the current year to the present Monthly cumulative spending.

I also selected data on the value of retail sales of companies(units) above designated size. There are 16 categories of retail category datafrom May 2017 to May 2018.

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In order to view the recent retail sales of consumer goods in anintuitive manner, I chose the latest retail sales data for consumer goods bylocation in May 2018. The urban and rural areas are displayed in proportions ofdifferent colors. It can be clearly seen that the two types of occupancy ratiosare comparable.

May 2018 National retail sales of consumer goods by operating area

From May 2018 the data, China's total retail sales of socialconsumer goods in urban retail sales accounted for nearly 86% of the nationaltotal.

Among the value of retail sales ofenterprises (units) above designated size, I made the data of the 16 categoriesfrom May 2017 to May 2018 into the river map below. It can be seen that theretail sales of each category change in a year.

Retail Sales of Products Above Designated Size (Unit) from May 2017 to May 2018

It can be seen that the sales of each type of merchandise startedfrom October to December in December 2017 is the largest, and the total retailsales of merchandise began to decrease in January and February of 2018. Theretail sales of the purple segment the car has been decreasing since December2017. This reflects the impact of the reduction policy of import tariffs onimports of cars since July 1st, and the public’s delay in car purchases.

In the “river” of retail sales of this product, we can see that thelargest color plate is the purple plate representing the car category, and thesecond largest is the azure plate representing grain, food and beverages. Thedark green oil sector is also large. Oil and cars are complementary products,which fully shows that “food” and “walking” occupy the vast majority of thetotal retail sales of social goods in China.

The following are the monthly retail sales, accumulated retail salesand growth rate of communication equipment, household appliances, cosmetics,and automotive products from March to May 2018, out of the 16 retail valuecategories of companies (units) above designated size. The following is adynamic display of the changes in retail sales of these categories since March.

(Greendot represents the cars, purple for household appliances, blue for communicationequipment, orange for cosmetics products.)

As can be seen from the chart, although the amount of retail salesof the car is large and the cumulative amount is large, due to policies, thegrowth rate in the recent period is getting lower and lower.

Although the value of communication equipment, household appliances,and cosmetics products is not as high as the retail sales of the car, thegrowth rate is getting higher and higher. This shows that the residents' incomehas been steadily increasing and the supply of goods has increased.

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