The government said in March it was committed to maintaining growth of 6.5 per cent over the next five years.
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China’s economy has shown signs of life this year after growing at the slowest annual pace in a quarter of a century in 2015.
(AP Photo/Andy Wong, File).
Citizens walk past commercial establishments at the shopping area of Qianmen district in Beijing, China, January 19, 2016.
That grim reality is countered by resilient growth in consumer demand, as China’s dynamic service sector continues to account for a larger share of overall economic output and job creation. In this Wednesday, April 13, 2016 photo, shoppers pass by a traditional shop front in Beijing.
A prolonged industrial glut, sagging foreign trade and cooling property investment dragged down China’s growth in 2015 to 6.9 percent, the slowest pace in 25 years.
However, carefully targeted stimulus helped stop it slowing even further, analysts said, raising hopes of improved stability.
In the final quarter of past year, the economy expanded by 6.8%.
China’s leaders are looking to manage a hard transition away from the investment- and export-led model of the past to an economy more driven by consumer demand, but the change is proving bumpy and global markets have fretted over the outlook.
He warned, however, that downward pressures remain due to uncertain worldwide conditions and difficulties under structural reforms.
China’s fixed-asset investment growth quickened to 10.7 percent year-on-year in the Jan-March period, beating market expectations for 10.3 percent, and industrial output growth leapt to 6.8 percent, surprising analysts who expected it to rise 5.9 percent.
The country’s GDP grew 6.7 percent year-on-year to reach 15.9 trillion yuan (USD 2.4 trillion), data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.
The data point masks what Miller says are three major trends driving China’s economic future.
Resorting to their usual policy tools, Chinese officials have cut interest rates repeatedly and lavished money on public works construction to counter the unexpectedly sharp downturn over the past two years.
Marie Diron, a senior vice president at Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group, said that stimulus measures must be implemented with caution so as not to increase longer term imbalances, particularly if they lead to a rapid increase in investment by state-owned firms that doesn’t yield benefits in terms of profitability or added value. “I would still be a bit cautious about headline growth… last year’s 6.9pc figure was underpinned by a massive contribution from financial services, and the strong loan and credit growth recently and the recent resumption of IPO activity suggests this could still be a big contribution”.
Global markets have reacted positively to stronger-than-expected trade data from China showing that the nation’s exports last month had returned to growth for the first time in nine months. Auto sales jumped by 10 percent. China earned the label of being “the factory of the world” from decades of manufacturing activity, the main driver of its rapid economic growth.
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In the International Monetary Fund’s gloomy forecast for the world economy, published earlier this week, China was a rare bright point.
