China’s economic data for last month missed expectations, data released yesterday showed, as low demand and high youth unemployment led to a patchy recovery after lifting strict COVID-19 rules.
Retail sales — a key indicator of domestic consumer activity — grew 18.4 percent year-on-year, Chinese National Bureau of Statistics data showed.
The reading was short of the 21.9 percent forecast in a survey of economists by Bloomberg, even as shoppers and diners returned to malls and restaurants.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Industrial production rose 5.6 percent, but was off 0.5 percentage points from March, while fixed-asset investments in the first four months of the year increased 4.7 percent, below the 5.7 percent forecast, as debt-laden local governments were forced to cut back on big infrastructure projects.
Unemployment among China’s urban 16-to-24-year-olds reached a record high of 20 percent last month, as the services sector was slow to absorb millions of rural migrants flocking to cities. Overall urban unemployment slipped to 5.2 percent, from 5.3 percent in March.
“The recovery of demand is still insufficient,” Chinese National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Fu Linghui (傅令輝) told a news conference. “External demand has weakened” and exporters face a “complex and severe” environment.
“The bulk of China’s rebound is now behind us,” Capital Economics Ltd said in a report. “The challenging global picture will prevent much pick-up in Chinese exports.”
Low domestic demand despite low inflation has slowed China’s economic recovery.
Beijing has set a growth target of about 5 percent this year, the lowest goal in decades, with Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) warning it “will be no easy task.”
“The growth target for this year is set at a low level, which leaves room for the government to wait and see,” Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd (保銀私募基金管理) chief economist Zhang Zhiwei (張智威) said.
China’s central bank on Monday said that the world’s second-largest economy was not on course to suffer from deflation, after data showed consumer prices edged up just 0.1 percent year-on-year last month, the slowest rate recorded since 2021.
Additional reporting by AP
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