File photo: CFP

China's fixed-asset investment dropped 6.7 percent year on year in the first seven months of 2026, official data showed Monday.

Investment totaled around 26 trillion yuan (about 3.84 trillion U.S. dollars) during this period, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement.

Excluding the property sector, the country's fixed-asset investment went down 3.7 percent in the first seven months of the year.

"From January to July, fueled by the fast growth of new quality productive forces and the orderly replacement of old growth drivers with new ones, investment in innovation and industrial upgrading sustained robust growth, continuously improving the country's investment structure," said Zhang Gang, an official with the NBS.

Notably, investment in intellectual property products rose by 9.1 percent year on year. It accounted for 14.8 percent of total investment, up 2.1 percentage points from the same period last year, and contributed 1.2 percentage points to overall investment growth.

By sector, investment in the mining sector rose by 3.3 percent year on year, while manufacturing investment fell 1.7 percent, and infrastructure investment slipped by 3.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the NBS.

In the first seven months, investment in high-tech industries rose 5 percent year on year. In particular, investment in high-tech manufacturing rose by 3.3 percent year on year, 0.1 percentage point faster than in the first half. Investment in high-tech services grew by 8.4 percent year on year, 0.9 percentage points faster than in the first half.

In July alone, China's fixed-asset investment fell 1.42 percent from the previous month, NBS data showed.

Moving forward, China will steadily push forward with the construction of six major infrastructure networks, and further improve its investment structure and efficiency, Zhang said.