China’s economy exceeded its annual growth target in 2017, overcoming the government’s battles against massive debt and pollution-spewing factories.
AFP reported that the world’s second largest economy expanded 6.8 per cent in 2017, much better than the official target of around 6.5 per cent.
According to the poll of 11 financial experts, the growth is also an improvement on the 6.7 per cent seen the previous year, which marked its worst performance in a quarter of a century.
Premier Li Keqiang last week said he expected growth to have come in “around 6.9 per cent”.
However, the forecast comes as fresh questions were raised about the veracity of the government’s data after an area in the northern municipality of Tianjin became the latest place to be found to have inflated its own readings.
The government statistics bureau will release its official figures on Thursday.
“China’s economic growth beat market expectations in 2017,” JP Morgan Chase economist Shaoyu Guo told AFP.
Guo noted that expansion in the first three quarters of the year were “led by infrastructure and real estate investment, and supported by solid consumption and improved external demand”.
Trade continued to be a major driver of growth as data last week showed exports and imports jumped in 2017, thanks to a pick-up in the global economy with the crucial US and European markets seeing strong recoveries.
The improvement at home comes in spite of government efforts to reduce the country’s substantial debt and to combat its persistent pollution problems, which were both expected to curb GDP growth.
The economy eased slightly in the last quarter to 6.7 per cent, the analysts said, from 6.8 per cent in the three months prior.
“October-November data showed moderation in the manufacturing sector,” Guo said, “partly reflecting stricter implementation of environmental protection policies going into the winter months.”
