GDP slowdown cloud has a silver lining: retail spending

As economists lower their 2015 growth forecasts for China, some have also hastened to point out the silver lining.

Retail sales, which is representative of society's consumer spending, is steadily expanding its importance relative to net exports and investment in fixed assets, such as the construction of new homes and factories.

Sheng Laiyun, an economist at the National Bureau of Statistics, said recently that in the first eight months of the year, retail sales registered 10.5 percent growth year-on-year, compared with 10.9 percent growth in fixed-asset investment and a 1.4 percent drop in exports.