Fu Linghui, spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), at a press conference held on July 15 in Beijing.
China’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the second quarter of 2022 from a year earlier, posting 2.5 percent growth in the first half of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics said on July 15.
For their part, experts, noting that these figures are lower than market forecasts, underlined the need to intensify the support in macroeconomic policy to support growth in the coming months. However, despite the challenges and uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic and a more complicated international environment, they at the same time said they expected a notable recovery in the third and fourth quarters of this year thanks to measures stimulus, including investment in infrastructure and increased support for hard-hit sectors and businesses.
Tommy Wu, senior economist at think tank Oxford Economics, said while China’s second-quarter GDP growth was below expectations and below first-quarter growth of 4.8%, June data was more positive, with activity picking up following most COVID-related restrictions were lifted. “We believe China’s economy is on track to recover in the second half of the year,” he said, adding that “even though the recent renewed COVID-related restrictions and future outbreaks of the epidemic will continue to threaten the pace of the recovery, we expect supply chains to experience less disruption than in the second quarter.”
China overcame multiple economic challenges in the second quarter with gradual improvements in key indicators including industrial production, consumption and investment, and the fundamentals of China’s strong long-term economic growth remain unchanged. the same time commented Fu Linghui, spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), explaining on July 15 at a press conference in Beijing that the Chinese economy still enjoys strong resilience, significant potential and plenty of room to manoeuvre, and is likely to recover gradually and maintain stable growth as stimulus policies take effect.
Elsewhere, SNB data showed investment in fixed assets and value-added industrial production rose 5.6% and 3.9% respectively in June, compared with 4.6% and 0.7% in June. may. Mr Wu of Oxford Economics, meanwhile, believes that infrastructure investment will play a crucial role in boosting growth in the second half of the year. Citing the Chinese government’s efforts to increase funding for infrastructure projects in recent months, he said he expected additional funds to be announced in the coming weeks, meaning that infrastructure investment this year might be larger than expected.
However, despite the improvement in recent indicators, Chen Jia, a researcher at the International Monetary Institute of Renmin University of China, noted that China still faces downward pressures both at home and abroad. foreign. Citing data from the BNS, he pointed out in particular that regions such as Shanghai, Beijing and east China’s Jiangsu Province, which generally lead the country’s growth, were hit hard by the pandemic in the second quarter. with declines of 13.7%, 2.9% and 1.1% year-on-year respectively in their GDP in the second quarter.
Looking to the rest of the year, Chen said China has sufficient policy tools and relatively large leeway to step up macroeconomic policy support, and he said he expects that the economy rebounds significantly in the second half of the year with stronger policy support for sectors like new energy, new infrastructure, modern and smart manufacturing and modern services.
Finally, Liu Dian, a research associate at the China Institute of Fudan University, said that the potential growth rate of the Chinese economy will probably be around 6%, while the country must achieve a growth of 7 to 8% in the second half to meet the predefined objective of around 5.5% GDP growth for the whole of 2022.
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