Thanks for joining us. Here are the key takeaways from China’s release of wide-ranging data on growth, retail sales, industrial output and other key metrics for the world’s second-biggest economy.
- The economy expanded 5.2% last year compared with 2022, when rolling pandemic lockdowns slammed activity. That beat a target of “around 5%” growth, which when released in March was seen as a conservative estimate until China hit a mid-year slowdown
- The biggest drag remains the housing sector. New apartment sales last year fell 6%, investment in property dropped 9.6% and the slump in prices deepened in December. On the bright side, industrial output expanded 4.6% last year, while annual retail sales grew 7.2%
- In a danger sign for both long-term housing demand and the pension-funding situation, the population shrank for a second year as people had fewer kids and more folks died. Some of those 11 million deaths are likely due to the massive wave of Covid in December 2022 and January 2023, but there were no details on that
- Premier Li Qiang had presaged the GDP data at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he pitched China to foreign investors and pledged to address the problems seen by foreign businesses in the country
- Analysts and financial markets were underwhelmed by the data: the HSCEI gauge of Chinese stocks traded in Hong Hong fell as much as 3.1%, the most since Oct. 3, and property-related stocks also declined
