Chinese retail sales rebounded in January and last month, as Beijing abandoned its suffocating “zero COVID” policy, reopening borders and ending mandatory quarantine, and the country celebrated the Lunar New Year holiday.
The 3.5 percent growth, released by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, came in line with expectations and was much better than the 1.8 percent drop in December last year, indicating that the world’s No. 2 economy was picking up after years of painful restrictions.
Moreover, with Beijing this week announcing it would resume issuing tourist visas, there is hope for further improvement this year.
Photo: Reuters
China usually releases January and February economic data together to ensure they are not skewed by the long Lunar New Year holiday.
Fixed-asset investment also showed an improvement, rising 5.5 percent in January-February — beating forecasts of 4.5 percent growth — as the government poured billions of US dollars into building new railways and industrial parks, bureau data showed.
However, industrial output expanded 2.4 percent — below the 2.6 percent expected.
“Production and demand have improved significantly, and employment and prices are generally stable,” the bureau said in a statement. “The economy is showing signs of stabilization and recovery.”
China has set an economic growth target of about 5 percent for this year, one of the lowest in decades.
However, Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) has warned that even this was “not easy” to achieve, as a grinding property crisis continued and global demand slowed.
In a sign of the troubles facing the property sector, investment in real estate fell 5.7 percent in January-February, as the sector continued to feel the effects of a government crackdown to curb risky borrowing by developers, the data showed.
The government has warned that a global slowdown would hamper the country’s recovery from the damage from the COVID-19 pandemic, as exports for January and February fell 6.8 percent compared with a year earlier.
“The economic data released today confirmed the recovery in China was well on track. This is consistent with the strong credit growth released earlier.” Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd (保銀私募基金管理) chief economist Zhang Zhiwei (張智威) said.
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