According to National Bureau of Statistics the industrial output of China's major enterprises up by 16.0% YoY in May. The increase was 0.3 percentage points higher than April and 2.1 percentage points lower than May last year.

Mr Zhang Yansheng head of the Research Institute of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation under the National Development and Reform Commission said "The industrial output slowed down despite the fact that the week long May Day holiday was shortened to three days this year, which gave the country a longer working month."

He said that the slower growth to the government's efforts to prevent the economy from going overheated. The January to May industrial output up by 16.3% YoY, 1.8 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.

Analysts said the growth in some sectors was likely driven by the surge in demand following the catastrophic earthquake in mid-May. After the quake which destroyed factories and houses, the country began constructing temporary settlement areas for the survivors and rebuilding infrastructure facilities in the affected regions.

The output of power and coal rose 11.8% and 18.5% respectively; crude steel was up by 10.5%; Motor vehicles rose 21.7% among which cars rose 17.6%. Crude oil output reached 16.2 million tonnes, a modest rise of 1.8% YoY from a year earlier.

The sales ratio of industrial products was 98.0% an increase of 0.1 percentage points over last May. This figure measured the part of production that were sold rather than those went into inventory.