Retail sales accelerated and industrial production topped expectations over first two months of the year.
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SINGAPORE—China reported surprisingly robust economic activity to start the year, giving Beijing some wind at its back as it faces the prospect of increased tensions with President Trump’s second administration.
Retail sales, a measure of consumer spending in China, accelerated, and investment and industrial production grew more than expected, though unemployment rose to a two-year high, and the beleaguered property market remained under pressure, according to official data.
The numbers come a day after Beijing released a policy plan to expand domestic consumption, including raising wages, increasing pensions and creating incentives for childbirth . The plan was the latest acknowledgment of the urgency in Beijing to find alternatives to export-led growth, but was light on specifics, such as whether new funding would be allocated to its policies, or how local governments would implement the proposed measures.
China earlier this month set an ambitious growth target of about 5% for 2025 and pledged to step up spending and boost domestic demand to stimulate a sluggish economy that is threatened by an escalating trade war with the U.S. The 5% growth target, unchanged from a year earlier, projected a sense of continuity as the Trump administration upends long-held assumptions about the global economic order .
In the two months since his return to office, Trump has put an additional 20% tariff on all Chinese goods and imposed an extra 25% duty on steel and aluminum imports.
China reported weaker-than-expected growth in the export sector to start 2025, which was a key engine of China’s economy last year—and which stands to take a hit as tariff barriers rise around the world. China also recently reported a drop in consumer prices for the first time in a year, a reflection of a larger disinflationary environment that has prompted Chinese leaders to call for more spending by households and businesses. Loans and credit data for February also came in below expectations.
On Monday, China said retail sales in the first two months of the year increased 4% from the same period a year earlier, up from December’s 3.7% year-over-year growth, according to figures published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. China combines January and February data each year to iron out distortions brought by the shifting timing of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Chinese leaders have identified boosting domestic consumption as their top policy priority for 2025, a move that economists say has become critical as Trump administration tariffs hinder Beijing’s ability to rely on exports to boost growth.
China said industrial production in January and February rose 5.9% from a year earlier, more than economists’ expectations for a 5.4% increase but down from the 6.2% year-over-year gain in December.
Production of new energy vehicles, which includes electric vehicles, 3-D printing equipment and industrial robots jumped 48%, 30%, and 27% year-over-year, respectively, according to the data. Investment in buildings, equipment and other fixed assets rose 4.1% for the same period compared with a year prior.
The real-estate sector, a sore spot in China’s economy, continued to struggle. Property investment fell 9.8% year over year during the first two months of the year. New construction starts dropped by about 30% from the year prior.
Many economists say a sustained recovery in China’s property market is essential to repairing consumer sentiment and increasing spending, given how important real estate is to household wealth levels in the country.
China’s headline measure of joblessness, the urban unemployment rate, rose to 5.4% in February, its highest level since February 2023, up from 5.2% in January and 5.1% in December, according to the data. The metric isn’t seasonally adjusted.
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AI-powered travel agents are challenging online booking platforms, but Airbnb’s exclusive listings and direct customer relationships could give it an edge. Its next challenge: turning repeat guests into loyal customers through stronger rewards and innovation.
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AI agents like Muse can already find you the cheapest hotel room in Paris. But they can’t locate a cheaper version of that Catskills cabin you’ve been eyeing, because it might only be available on Airbnb ABNB -1.43%decrease.
Investors should pay attention to that distinction. When Meta Platforms META 3.38%increase launched its Muse agent last month, travel stocks including Booking Holdings BKNG -1.19%decrease, Expedia and Airbnb all fell sharply.
Airbnb, though, has a real chance to emerge as a winner from the upheaval. The catch: Its stock already reflects above-industry growth. To justify its valuation, Airbnb will need to turn repeat customers into loyal ones.
Online travel companies make much of their money by simplifying search and collecting fees on bookings. AI agents threaten that model.
But not all travel marketplaces are equally exposed. Booking and Expedia largely sell hotel rooms that travelers can also book directly or through competing sites. If an agent can find the same room elsewhere, it has little reason to favor either Booking or Expedia.
Booking and Expedia also sell sponsored listings that steer travelers toward particular properties. Wells Fargo estimates those will account for about 8% of Expedia’s revenue and a much higher percentage of profit next year.
Airbnb has more ways to adapt. More than half its listings are available only on its platform, and more than 90% of its traffic comes directly to its app or website.
The customer relationship doesn’t end after booking, either. Bernstein analyst Richard Clarke notes that 90% of Airbnb guests go on to message their hosts about arrival times, keys or local taxes, giving Airbnb a connection to both sides of the transaction.
How the companies have responded to the possible agentic future is telling.
Expedia quickly signed on as a Muse partner. Airbnb hasn’t, and Chief Executive Brian Chesky says AI chatbots have so far been a boon, sending customers to Airbnb’s website.
Chatbots might work for buying paper towels, he quipped at a Skift conference last month, but people enjoy planning trips. He argued that browsing dozens of homes isn’t something a text-based chatbot is well suited for.
Still, the AI jitters arrived just as Airbnb was persuading investors it deserved its pricey multiple. For years after its 2020 initial public offering, the stock—which trades around 25 to 30 times forward earnings—went nowhere. Investors saw a mature operator trading at a growth premium.
This year, Airbnb growth seems to be accelerating. The stock jumped in August after the company raised its full-year revenue-growth guidance with its second-quarter results. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski credits a run of product improvements under a revamped leadership team.
Among the changes: letting guests reserve now and pay later, adding hotels, and a redesigned home page and app. Investors were also betting on what comes next, including thousands more hotels, car rentals and, eventually, advertising.
The irony is that some of those growth drivers push Airbnb closer to the kind of business Booking and Expedia run—the kind of business AI agents could threaten. Even if AI agents capture a large share of travel planning and booking, Airbnb would capture the demand. But it and others would slowly lose control over how customers find and choose properties.
That would undermine the advertising opportunity investors are counting on. The bigger point for Airbnb and other marketplaces is that losing control of customer acquisition could mean surrendering some of their pricing power and margins.
To bulletproof itself, Airbnb might look to another e-commerce giant that has so far kept AI agents at arm’s length: Amazon.
Like Amazon, Airbnb has a loyal customer base and hard-to-match supply. But it has nothing like Prime membership to make customers think twice before taking their business elsewhere.
That is where loyalty comes in. Business travelers stick with Hilton or Marriott because enough nights earn them perks. Leisure travelers rarely accumulate stays with one chain. Airbnb has millions of listings and plenty of repeat customers, but no broad rewards program. It has begun experimenting with credits on hotel stays, but it should make loyalty a priority, not just a promotion.
Airbnb also plans to launch its own AI agent next year. But travelers using an agent might still want it to search Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking and hotel websites alike, rather than limit itself to one company’s inventory.
Eventually, Airbnb might have to strike deals with agent makers, using its unique homes as leverage to negotiate favorable terms, says Gawrelski. Such deals, along with rewards for loyal guests, could over the long term eat into the company’s roughly 13% take rate, he adds. But if they bring in enough additional bookings, the trade-off could be worthwhile.
History offers a reason not to panic. The shift from desktop to mobile unsettled investors in Alphabet and Amazon, but both emerged as major beneficiaries. Companies with valuable assets can come out of a platform shift stronger, if they adapt quickly enough.
Airbnb has homes the bots can’t easily replace. Now it needs to give guests a reason to insist on booking them there.
