China revised its 2023 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) upwards by 2.7%, totaling 129.4 trillion yuan (US$17.73 trillion), a senior statistics official said on Thursday (26), during the release of the fifth national economic census.
Policy support later this year put the Chinese economy on track to achieve the growth target of “around 5%” with a slight improvement in economic activities.
However, challenges such as possible tariff increases by the United States still put pressure on the outlook for next year.
Kang Yi, head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, made remarks at a press conference in Beijing, adding that the agency will publish more details about the review on its website in the coming days.
The Chinese economy has “withstood the test of multiple internal and external risks over the past five years, maintaining a generally stable trend with progress,” Kang said.
The fifth economic census, carried out over the last five years, covered the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had a significant impact on the economy, said the head of the agency.
The international environment has undergone “profound and complex changes” since the previous census, he added.
The 2023 GDP revision will not have a significant impact on China’s GDP growth rate in 2024, said Lin Tao, deputy head of the National Bureau of Statistics, during the same briefing.
This Thursday, the World Bank raised its forecast for China’s economic growth in 2024 and 2025, but warned that subdued consumer and business confidence, in addition to headwinds in the real estate sector, will continue to weigh on next year.
The economic census revealed changes in China’s labor market, with a 25.6% increase in the number of people employed in the tertiary sector at the end of 2023 compared to the end of 2018. On the other hand, the secondary sector recorded a decline 4.8% in the number of employees.
With a serious crisis in the real estate sector hampering the macroeconomic recovery, the number of employees in developers fell by 27%, to 2.71 million at the end of 2023, compared to the number recorded in 2018. However, total employment in the real estate industry increased by 40 .2%, reaching 14.39 million at the end of 2023.
Tertiary industries include everything from retail and transportation to food services, accommodation, finance and property, while secondary industries encompass mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction, for example.
