Profits earned by China's industrial firms slid 38.3% year-on-year to 410.7 billion yuan ($58.15 billion) in the first two months of 2020, the statistics bureau said on Friday.
The decline follows December's 6.3% drop and compares with a 14% fall for the same two-month period the previous year.
The reading combines results for January and February to exclude distortions caused by the week-long Lunar New Year.
Liabilities at industrial firms grew 5.3% on year at end-February, versus a 5.4% increase as of end-2019.
The data covers large companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan from their main operations.
The decline in profits points to lingering trouble for the manufacturing sector, which is wrestling with a coronavirus epidemic that has severely hurt output and is expected to halve economic growth in the current quarter compared with the previous three months.