China's GDP hits all-time high

Beijing: China's GDP jumped a record 18.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2021, riding on strong domestic and foreign demand and aided by recovery from a low base in early 2020 when Covid-19 stalled the world's second-largest economy, according to statistics released on Friday.

The gross domestic product (GDP) reached 24.93 trillion yuan (about $3.82 trillion) in Q1, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. This is the highest quarterly growth rate since China first began publishing GDP data in 1993.

The double-digit growth puts the average Q1 growth of 2020 and 2021 at 5 per cent from the 2019 level, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. In the first three months, China saw a steady industrial production rebound, improvement in market sales, recovery in fixed-asset investment, and noticeable momentum in foreign trade of goods, it said. China's economy, which was the first to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic and early to recover from its impact, grew 2.3 per cent in 2020, registering the lowest annual growth rate in 45 years.

The GDP of the world's second-largest economy grew by 2.3 per cent expanding to $15.42 trillion in 2020, according to the data released by the NBS said. In the local currency, the GDP exceeded the 100 trillion yuan ($15.42 trillion) threshold to 101.5986 trillion yuan. Early this month, the IMF increased China's GDP projection to 8.4 per cent for this year, a 10-year high but cautioned that the growth is unbalanced and private consumption has not recovered as fast.