Multiple high-frequency data sets indicate that China's economy began the year on a strong footing in the first quarter, with the consumer market showing steady growth. Offline consumption big data reveals that offline consumer payment amounts increased by 3.4% year-on-year during the quarter, accelerating by 2.2 percentage points compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Specifically, goods consumption rose by 5.2% year-on-year, a growth rate 3.2 percentage points higher than the previous quarter, with notable strength in electronics and home appliances categories. Service consumption grew by 0.9% year-on-year, up 0.5 percentage points from the fourth quarter, led by transportation and catering services.
The first quarter displayed both robust volume and optimized structure in offline consumption, particularly strong demand for home appliances and digital products. This performance is attributed to precise policy measures, including ultra-long-term special treasury bonds supporting consumer trade-in programs and optimized personal consumption loan subsidies. As these consumption-boosting policies continue to take effect, the consumer market is expected to see further improvements in both scale and quality.
On the investment front, capital supply strengthened with rapid growth in cutting-edge sectors. Calculations show that national special bond issuance volume increased by 20.8% year-on-year in the first quarter. Project winning bid amounts related to computing infrastructure and software/hardware development grew by 4.7% year-on-year, while investment transaction values in frontier fields like artificial intelligence and humanoid robots surged by 45.5% year-on-year.
Foreign trade maintained its growth momentum. In the first quarter, the deadweight tonnage of cargo vessels departing from and arriving at major ports increased by 9.6% and 5.4% year-on-year respectively, representing accelerations of 23.4 and 7.0 percentage points from the fourth quarter. Daily average port cargo and container throughput rose by 2.4% and 8.5% year-on-year respectively, with growth rates improving by 1.6 and 1.4 percentage points from the previous quarter.
Key innovation indicators also showed positive trends. The business vitality index for startup enterprises and technology innovation enterprises increased by 8.8% and 8.1% year-on-year respectively in the first quarter. Innovation activity in artificial intelligence remained vigorous. Patent data indicates that authorized patents in strategic emerging industries grew by 8.7% year-on-year in the first quarter, with March alone showing 18.4% growth. Authorized patents related to artificial intelligence surged by 31.2% year-on-year in the quarter, reaching 39.8% growth in March, demonstrating sustained innovation momentum.
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