China's retail sales of consumer goods grew 0.4% year over year to 3.982 trillion yuan in August, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Tuesday.

The pace of growth was softer than the 0.6% expansion recorded in the previous month. It missed the consensus forecast of 0.7% growth tracked by Investing.com.

Sales in urban areas rose 0.2% year over year to 3.446 trillion yuan, while rural retail sales edged up 1.6% to 536.7 billion yuan.

For the first eight months of the year, retail sales in China rose 1.1% year over year to 32.8 trillion yuan, easing from the 1.2% growth in the January-July period.