BEIJING, March 17 -- China's retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country's consumption strength, climbed 4 percent year on year in the first two months of 2025, official data showed Monday.

The growth rate is 0.5 percentage points higher than that in 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Total retail sales of consumer goods reached over 8.37 trillion yuan (about 1.17 trillion U.S. dollars) from January to February. Excluding automobiles, the figure was 7.68 trillion yuan, registering a year-on-year growth of 4.8 percent.

"Markets are the scarcest resource. With a population of over 1.4 billion and a per capita GDP of over 13,000 U.S. dollars, China offers a market with huge potential, broad space, and great development opportunities," NBS spokesperson Fu Linghui told a press conference Monday.

Retail sales in the country's urban regions rose 3.8 percent year on year in the two-month period, while that in rural areas expanded 4.6 percent.

Online retail sales jumped 7.3 percent year on year to around 2.28 trillion yuan in the period. In particular, online retail sales of physical goods rose 5 percent year on year to 1.86 trillion yuan, accounting for 22.3 percent of the total retail sales of consumer goods.

As Chinese residents' consumption capacity grows and consumption upgrades speed up, new types of consumption like green and digital consumption, and service consumption such as elderly and childcare services, are expanding and will become key drivers of consumption growth, Fu said.