China's industrial profits improve in January-July

Chinese industrial businesses saw faster growth in profits in the first seven months this year, with a year-on-year increase of 11.7 percent during the period, official data showed on Thursday.

Total profits of industrial companies reached 3.34 trillion yuan (542 billion U.S. dollars), with the growth accelerating 0.3 percentage points from the January-June period, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

In July alone, industrial companies reaped combined profits of 482.33 billion yuan, which were 13.5 percent larger than a year ago. But the 13.5-percent growth in July was 4.4 percentage points lower than that in June.