The growth rate is up from the 1999 level of 8.9 percent, when the nation struggled hard against weak demand from both domestic and international markets.

The country's industrial added-value totalled 2.37 trillion yuan (US$286 billion) in 2000, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

As in the prior two years, the industrial sector was driven mainly by the heavy industrial segment, the direct beneficiary of the stimulation programme launched in mid-1998.

The programme immediately generated hefty demand for basic products like cement, steel and glass and telecommunication products. It also gradually lifted the power sector out of a plight of sluggish growth in demand for power.

Bureau figures show heavy industries' added-value output grew 13 percent last year. The figure for light industries was 9.5 percent.

Telecommunications, power, electric machinery and chemical industry were, in that order, the top four sectors for increased added-value.

The four, along with the textile and metallurgical industry, accounted for about 55 percent of the industrial growth in 2000, bureau officials said.

A revived foreign trade sector also considerably contributed to industrial growth.

Under the influence of a robust US economy and Asian economies that have bid farewell to the late-1990s financial crisis, China's manufacturers last year sold 1.4 trillion yuan (US$168 billion) worth of products overseas.

That represented an impressive annual growth of 24.6 percent, which nearly tripled the figure of 8.8 percent posted in 1999.

Compared with investment in infrastructure and exports, domestic consumption paled as a force driving industrial growth, as evidenced by the light industries' much slower growth rate.

The bureau said only one-third of last year's industrial growth could be attributed to the light industries, which is largely buoyed by domestic consumption.

(China Daily 01/16/2001)