More Chinese people wanted to save in the first quarter, rather than spend or invest their money, according to a People's Bank of China survey.
Although the central bank survey found that the share of respondents who wanted to spend money in the first quarter fell to 23.7%, that level was only the lowest in a year, data accessed through Wind showed. An even lower 22% had expressed interest in spending during the worst of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020.
Education was the top category in which Chinese consumers planned to increase their spending over the next three months. The PBOC survey found that 28.9% expressed such an intent — up from 27.2% in the fourth quarter last year.the share of respondents planning to buy a house remained the same for both quarters, at 17.9%, the survey said.While planning to cut down on spending, Chinese consumers said they were not inclined to invest their money either.
The share of respondents wanting to invest fell to 21.6%, the lowest on record going back to the first quarter of 2009, according to Wind. Appetite for stock investing was the lowest among the three investment categories listed, and the share of respondents wanting to buy stocks falling to 16.2% in the first quarter — down from 17.3% in the previous quarter, survey data showed.
The PBOC said its quarterly survey, conducted since 1999, covered 20,000 people with bank deposits across 50 large-, medium- and small-sized cities in the country.