Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Roaring exports lifted China’s economic growth in the third quarter of this year, with factory output growing much faster than consumer spending.
China’s GDP grew by 4.5 per cent year-on-year between July and September, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported on October 19. The figures were better than economists had expected and up from the second quarter’s growth rate of 4.3 per cent.
China’s economy has now grown by 4.6 per cent in the first nine months of the year, putting it on track to hit the government’s 2026 target of 4.5 per cent-5 per cent growth without extra stimulus measures.
Industrial production rose 5.5 per cent in September, up from 5.2 per cent in August, while retail sales only increased 1.1 per cent, up from 0.4 per cent. Duncan Wrigley, the chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Beijing’s policymakers were likely to conclude that their efforts to stabilise headline growth in the third quarter were successful.
“Hi-tech manufacturing output continues to outperform traditional sectors, as China climbs the value-added ladder,” Wrigley added.
However, fixed-asset investment fell 7.2 per cent over the first nine months, property investment tumbled by 20.6 per cent, and infrastructure spending remained weak. Data last week showed that China’s exports surged by more than a third in September, lifted by a rise in shipments of electronics related to AI.
