China’s major industrial enterprises achieved a total profit of 5.52 trillion yuan ($795.4 billion) from January to October, up 13.6 percent year-on-year, data showed on Nov 27.

The figure was down 1.1 percent compared with that from January to September and it came from weakening demand caused by the China-US trade frictions.

“There are signs that overall demand is weakening. That could lead to production decline and falling profits,” said Xu Wei from Development Research Center of the State Council.

In October alone, the total profits of China’s major industrial enterprises with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan (about $2.89 million) increased 3.6 percent year-on-year to reach 548.02 billion yuan ($78.97 billion), 0.5 percentage points lower than last month.

Analysts attributed the slowdown to easing factory-gate inflation, despite a strong rebound in output.

Profits of major industrial enterprises in the first ten months registered a decrease of 1.1 percentage points compared with last year, but remained a steady growth on the whole, according to He Ping, from the Industrial Division of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Those with more new profits were heavy industries like steel, petroleum, chemical, and building materials. The Steel industry, for example, enjoyed a profit increase of 63.7 percent from January to October.

The debt-asset ratios of major industrial firms dropped 0.5 percentage points year-on-year to 56.7 percent by the end of October.