This was an 11% increase from the corresponding period past year.
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Weakening trade and manufacturing have fueled concern about possible job losses and unrest.
The central bank has already cut interest rates five times since November, and reduced the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves to spur activity, though a few analysts say such moves have not been as effective as in the past when the economy was more tightly controlled and debt levels were much lower.
And industrial production – which measures output at factories, workshops and mines – rose just 5.7 percent year-on-year in September, the NBS said, well down on August’s figure and missing economists’ median estimate of 6.0 percent.
Retail sales growth ticked up modestly to 10.9 per cent in September, up from 10.8 per cent the previous month, seen as crucial proof that the wild swings in the Chinese sharemarket hadn’t adversely affected wider consumer confidence. Internet buyers remain the country’s most voracious spenders, with online sales up 36.2 per cent in the first nine months of the year. “But robust consumption and infrastructure prevented a sharper slowdown”. The services sector expanded 8.6% year on year in the third quarter, matching its strongest growth since 2011.
This month’s annual meeting of the Communist Party will be watched closely for signs that Beijing may be ready to intervene more aggressively to boost growth. Imports found a sudden fall for the last month while inflation eased by more than anticipated, adding to anxieties of a rapid slowdown in the second-largest market of the worlds.
The slowdown comes despite repeated interest rate cuts and other stimulus measures introduced by Beijing.
China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang even said once that the figures that go into measuring the country’s GDP are “for reference only”, and that he preferred not to rely on them.
After saying in early 2015 that a rise was expected as the USA economy picked up pace, bank policymakers have gradually lowered their expectations, with turmoil unleashed by China’s yuan depreciation in August playing a major role. The NDRC argued that China is on track to achieve its 2015 growth target of “around 7%” – which may be more easily achieved given the slightly smaller size of China’s economy in 2014. Analysts who question the data can generally be sorted into two camps: those who think that China’s numbers are out-and-out fabrications, concealing the economy’s true, grim state; and those who think that China’s numbers are embellishments, inflating growth but not altogether misrepresenting it. The weight of evidence is on the side of the latter.
An official spokesman described third quarter growth as a “slight slowdown” but said the economy was still running within a “proper range”.
There are stronger grounds for the milder form of scepticism: China does appears to be doctoring its growth data a little.
At the same time, the “new normal” growth drivers such as consumption and service sector expand robustly.
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Manufacturing was the best performing subset, clocking a 7 percent increase, followed by a 3.3 percent increase for mining, and a 1.7 percent growth in electricity, heat, gas, and water subset.
