On December 17th, China's National Statistics Bureau (CNSB) published the performance data of the country's designated-size* industrial enterprises in the first 11 months of 2021. Net earnings of these enterprises totaled RMB7.98 trillion, up 38.0% from the corresponding period of 2020. These included the 1.86 times year-on-year jump to RMB992.07 billion of such enterprises in the mining sector, +34.5% growth to RMB6.61 trillion in the manufacturing sector, and the -28.2% decline to RMB370.05 billion of those in the electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply sector.

Compared with the +200% or even +300% surge in earnings of enterprises at coal and oil extraction, processing, and related industries, overall earnings of paper and paper product enterprises at designated size rose only 13.9% to RMB77.88 billion in the 11-month period. However, this was better than the negative performance of enterprises in a few other industries. At the same time, core business revenue of designated-size paper and paper product enterprises reached RMB1.35 trillion, up 15.4%, though with a 16.1% rise in business cost to nearly RMB1.16 trillion. Information from industry media also showed that the active performance of the paper industry in the first three quarters of 2021 enabled 17 publically traded paper companies, among the 21 at the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) to perform profitably, while stock prices of all the paper making concept stocks fared better than that of 2020 at the SSE. 

*Enterprise whose annual core business revenue reaching/exceeding RMB20 million.