China Sees Record-Breaking Electricity Consumption In August

China’s electricity consumption hit a record this month after rising steadily since the start of summer, noting that the trend suggested a robust recovery in economic activity in Asia’s second-largest economy.

Electricity consumption in the manufacturing sector has specifically posted a marked recovery since July, reversing a negative consumption trend from the first half of the year.

In even better news, electricity consumption in the consumer goods production sector rose by as much as 46.1 percent during the second quarter of the year, signaling expectations of more robust consumer spending—a vital indicator of an economy’s health and conducive to higher energy demand.

The data is the latest sign that China’s economy is improving steadily after the lockdowns prompted by the pandemic, and ties in with data about oil imports, which have also been rising over the past few months.

There has been, however, worry that the end of China’s oil-buying spree is nearing after imports declined in July from June. Even with the slowdown, though, the July 2020 average was 25 percent higher than the average for July 2019.

Positive economic news from China has been as crucial to oil prices’ recovery as OPEC+’s production cuts, and it will only become more critical now that the group has eased its cuts by some 2 million barrels daily.

The latest in this respect were the results from a CNBC survey among global CFOs, which revealed the executives were more optimistic about China’s economy than that of the United States, for the first time in history ever.

The average outlook of the SFOs surveyed by CNBC was “stable” for China’s GDP, while their outlook for U.S. economic growth was for a “moderate decline.” Even their outlook for Europe is more favorable than that of the U.S.: the executives have also given Europe’s economy a “stable” outlook.