China’s economy last year suffered one of its worst annual performances in more than three decades, official figures showed Wednesday.
The country battled a crippling property crisis, sluggish consumption and global turmoil.
Gross domestic product expanded 5.2 percent to hit 126 trillion yuan ($17.6 trillion), China’s national bureau of statistics reported.
Official GDP figures remain a key source of insight into the health of the world’s second-largest economy, despite being eminently political.
Wednesday’s reading is an improvement on the three percent growth recorded in 2022, a year that saw business activity hammered by tight health curbs designed to contain Covid-19.
But excluding the pandemic years, 2023 marked China’s weakest performance since 1990.
The economy enjoyed an initial post-pandemic rebound, but ran out of steam within months as a lack of confidence among households and businesses battered consumption.
An intractable real estate crisis, record youth unemployment and a global slowdown are also gumming the gears of the Chinese growth engine.
The country’s exports — historically a key growth lever — fell last year for the first time since 2016.
Geopolitical tensions with the United States and efforts by some Western nations to reduce dependence on China or diversify their supply chains have also hit growth.
A record of more than one in five people aged 16 to 24 in China were unemployed in May, according to officials.
Beijing has since suspended the monthly publication of youth unemployment figures, this hiding the Unemployment problem from the Public view.
