Employees working on a dry-type transformer production line at a power generation factory in Haian, east China’s Jiangsu Province, Jan. 4, 2021.
Stringer | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING – China reported GDP rose 2.3% over the past year as the world battled to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
However, Chinese consumers continued to be reluctant to spend as retail sales fell 3.9% over the year. Retail sales increased 4.6% year over year in the fourth quarter.
The gross domestic product grew by 6.5% in the fourth quarter compared to the previous year.
Economists expected China to be the only major economy to have grown over the past year and forecast GDP growth of just over 2%.
Covid-19 first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019. To control the virus, Chinese authorities closed more than half the country and the economy contracted 6.8% in the first three months of 2020.
However, China returned to growth in the second quarter. Economists polled by Reuters forecast GDP to grow 6.1% in the fourth quarter, faster than the 4.9% pace in the previous quarter.
China’s GDP growth this year is expected to come from a lower base.
In late December, the National Bureau of Statistics cut China’s official growth rate for 2019 to 6.0% from the 6.1% previously reported. The cut came mostly in manufacturing as factories dealt with new US tariffs on Chinese goods valued at billions of dollars.
