Employees working on 4 January 2021 on a dry transformer production line at an electrical production plant in Haian, in the east of Jiangsu Province.
Stringer | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING – China reported rising GDP by 2.3% last year as the world struggled to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
In the fourth quarter of a year ago, gross domestic product grew by 6.5%, the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
However, Chinese consumers were reluctant to spend as retail sales shrank by 3.9% for the year. Retail sales for the fourth quarter increased by 4.6% compared to a year ago.
Online consumer goods sales rose at a relatively fast pace of 14.8% last year, the statistics bureau said, but the share of total retail sales held about a fourth steady.
Economists expected China to be the only major economy last year, predicting GDP growth of just over 2%.
Covid-19 first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. In an effort to control the virus, Chinese authorities closed more than half of the country and the economy shrank by 6.8% in the first three months of 2020.
However, China regained growth by the second quarter. Economists polled by Reuters predicted that GDP would rise by 6.1% in the fourth quarter, faster than the rate of 4.9% in the previous quarter.
China’s GDP growth rate this year will come from a reduced base.
At the end of December, the National Bureau of Statistics lowered China’s official growth rate for 2019 to 6.0%, from the previously reported 6.1%. The reduction occurred primarily in manufacturing, as factories handled new U.S. tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods.
– This is news. Please come and check for updates.