Chinese leader provides early estimate of economic growth
China's second-supreme leader said on Tuesday that his country's economy grew by “about 5.2 percent” last year, giving an unusual first look at key economic data a day before its official release.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Premier Li Qiang, China's second-highest official after Xi Jinping, said China exceeded its target of economic growth of about 5 percent last year. He also emphasized that China has managed to expand its economy without resorting to risky or short-term measures such as large spending or credit programs.
“In the course of economic development, we have avoided large stimulus measures, and we have not pursued short-term growth at the expense of the accumulation of long-term risks,” he said.
Mr. Li's comments were consistent with publicly available estimates of last year's economic growth. China will announce the official number in Beijing on Wednesday.
Caixin, a Chinese news organization, said a survey among economists concluded last week that the economy was likely to grow by 5.3 percent.
The timing of official economic reports has been a sensitive topic in China since the government postponed the release of economic growth information by a week in October 2022. The extra time allowed the Communist Party to complete a major national congress before disseminating mediocre statistics to the Chinese population. public.
Stephen Roach, a Yale economist and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said Mr. Li's mention of an economic growth estimate was a far less serious departure from any global norm than the 2022 slowdown. questions about the credibility of the Chinese figures, so I don't think this is a serious violation of our confidence in those figures,” he said.
As Mr Li said, China is wary of rapidly ramping up economic stimulus to reverse a broad slowdown. China is particularly wary of increases in central government spending. It even shrunk the country's social safety net last year by implementing a smaller increase in government payments to seniors and ending a major unemployment insurance program.
But in recent months, China's central government has authorized the sale of additional bonds, a form of borrowing, and raised the ceiling on deficit spending. Beijing said the bonds were partly needed to provide additional cash in response to last summer's severe flooding. The Chinese central bank has also taken steps to indirectly provide additional credit to local governments this winter.
China is facing a sharp downturn in the real estate sector and an alarming loss of consumer confidence. Mr Li used much of his Davos speech to present China as an attractive market for global companies and as a country with strong prospects for economic growth. He pointed out that China, the world's largest exporter, has what he described as the widest range of industries in the world.
Chris Buckley And Li you contributed to reporting and research.