--Viewing China's Economy from Q3 Statistics

By Zhang Liqun, Department of Macroeconomic Research of the State Council (DRC)

Abstract:

Since the third quarter, affected by world economic performance and international market changes as well as relevant factors. China's export growth has evidently declined, industrial growth is slowing down yet with stable performance and the deceleration of economic growth is mainly manifested in industrial manufacturing sector whereas consumption has continued to grow steadily. Under complex circumstances of economic transformation, to grasp the key issue of ensuring people's basic wellbeing is a crucial leverage to achieve mid-to-high-level appropriate growth. The core goal of steady growth, for both now and future, should focus on ensuring employment, steady income and improved livelihood, which should also be the major issues to underpin economic growth. The housing market sales are picking up. Despite the task of digesting housing stock, units in stock in big cities have kept decreasing rapidly and investments in housing development are bound to increase gradually. Although housing sales are turning up, affected by the large number of housing units in stock, housing investment growth rate has declined. Despite fluctuations in infrastructure investment, it remains a strong momentum. Factors supporting infrastructure investment are stable and rallying up. More efforts are made to deal with overcapacity, and stock market risks are under control. In addition, given the price fall of industrial products for over 40 consecutive months, businesses see their inventories being reduced continuously; along with intensified economic restructuring, efforts for addressing overcapacity in iron and steel, cement and other industries are stepped up. Overall speaking, factors relating to downward pressure on economic growth are mounting. On the other hand, we should be aware that the efforts made towards steady growth since 2012 are seeing accumulated progress in stabilizing market demand, promoting structural adjustment and cultivating new growth drivers. Therefore, despite downward pressure, China's economy has maintained a stable growth and moving in a positive direction.