Industrial growth slows to a crawl

China's industrial growth saw a pronounced slowdown last month as the global credit squeeze and declining orders began to bite.

The index of overall industrial growth - which covers value-added production from all enterprises earning at least 5 million yuan ($733,000) last year - rose 8.2 percent year on year in October, plunging 9.7 percentage points from a year earlier.

It was also down 3.2 percentage points from September, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) yesterday.