But it was in line with expectations. And on a quarter-over-quarter annualized basis–the way it’s measured in the US and Europe–growth actually accelerated to 9.1 percent in the third quarter from 8.2 percent in the second.

Other statistics suggest the Chinese economy is stabilizing, and even show signs the Middle Kingdom is its inevitable transition from investment-led to consumer-led growth. Retail sales rose 14.2 percent year over year, the best showing since March 2012 and better than a 13.2 percent consensus forecast.

A two-and-a-half-year effort by Chinese leaders to arrest the country’s real estate market seems to be succeeding, as an analysis of average home prices in 70 cities by the Wall Street Journal blog China Real Time Report revealed a 1.2 percent year-over-year decline in September.

This effort is in fact the primary cause of China’s slowdown. And new residential floor space under construction declined by 28 percent year over year in September, reversing what looked like a resumption of growth in August, when data revealed a 15.6 percent year-over-year increase.

But China Real Time also reports, via a Credit Suisse Group AG (Switzerland: CSGN, NYSE: CS) property analyst, “that monthly data is volatile” and “that the downturn in the numbers was at odds with what their research team had been hearing on the ground.”

According to Credit Suisse note to clients, “A very large national construction company chief executive told us in September that he saw housing new starts accelerating, especially in the South China region.

The National Bureau of Statistics also reported that during the first three quarters of 2012 per-capita disposable income of urban households grew by 13 percent, which along with the effects of policymakers’ successful attempts to rein in housing affordability problems are being solved.

Value-added industrial production was up 9.2 percent in September from a year earlier, accelerating from an 8.9 percent increase in August and beating a consensus expectation for a 9 percent rise.

Fixed-asset investment in non-rural areas–a closely watched indicator of construction activity and demand for machine equipment–was up 20.5 percent in the first nine months compared with the same period a year earlier. That was up from 20.2 percent in the first eight months of the year and also beat a consensus forecast of 20.2 percent rise.

It’s been pretty dark data for some months now out of China, now the world’s second-largest economy and its most-watched growth engine. But consumption is clearly rising, and construction and industrial activity appear to be at least establishing a foundation for new growth.

And that means now is a good time to check out opportunities in copper.

Aditya Birla Minerals Ltd (ASX: ABY, OTC: ABWAF) is a small-cap producer of the red metal, with two high-quality operating mines in Australia and several exploration and development opportunities on the horizon. It’s backed by one of the world’s biggest conglomerates and has very little debt.

It’s trading at just over six times earnings, and its price-to-book ratio is just 0.31. And, most germane to our purposes, it’s yielding 9.4 percent as of Friday’s close of trading on the Australian Securities Exchange in Sydney. Wait for a pullback to AUD0.50 before stepping in to buy Aditya Birla Minerals.