China's retail sales of consumer goods grew 0.6% year over year to 3.902 trillion yuan in July, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Monday.

The pace of growth was slower than the 1% expansion recorded in the previous month. It missed the consensus forecast of 1.5% growth tracked by Investing.com.

Sales in urban areas rose 0.5% year over year to 3.378 trillion yuan, while rural retail sales edged up 1.6% to 524.2 billion yuan.

For the first seven months of the year, retail sales in China rose 1.2% year over year to 28.8 trillion yuan, easing from the 1.3% growth in the January-June period.