China's GDP rebounds, clocks 4.9% growth

Beijing: China's economy, which suffered 6.8 per cent slump in the first quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic - the worst in 44 years, bounced back posting 4.9 per cent growth between July and September buoyed by the government's sweeping efforts to stimulate demand and consumption.

The world's second-largest economy, the first to have been hit by the Covid-19 early this year and the earliest to have recovered while the rest of the world reeled under the pandemic lockdowns, grew faster than the 3.2-per cent growth posted in Q2, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.

In the first three quarters, China's GDP expanded 0.7 per cent year-on-year, returning to growth after the 1.6-per cent contraction in the first half of the year and the 6.8-per cent slump in Q1, the data showed.

To soften the impact of the Covid-19 shock, the Chinese government has rolled out a raft of measures, including more fiscal spending, tax relief, and cuts in lending rates and banks' reserve requirements to stabilize growth and employment.

The near five per cent growth in Q3 is a far cry from the slump the Chinese economy suffered when coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in December last year and led to shutdowns of factories and markets all over the country during the first three months of this year.

China's GDP took the worst hit since the disastrous Cultural Revolution in 1976, plummeting by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 as the country took unprecedented measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic that brought the world's second-largest economy to a standstill.

It was the worst contraction of the economy since China started recording quarterly figures back in 1992.

But as the epidemic is largely brought under control domestically, factories and schools have reopened and tourist sites across the country have resumed their usual hustle and bustle, State-run Xinhua news agency said.

In Q3, major indicators returned to positive territory, with industrial output rising 5.8 per cent and retail sales reporting the first quarterly expansion this year, up 0.9 per cent year-on-year. The country's fixed-asset investment went up 0.8 per cent year-on-year in the first three quarters, reversing a decline of 3.1 per cent in the first half of this year.

"Seen from the trends of the key indicators, China's epidemic prevention and economic recovery are at the world's forefront, which shows the strong resilience and vitality of the economy," Liu Aihua, spokesperson of the NBS, told the media.