China’s factories are beginning to hum again. Its consumers are opening their wallets. Its trade tensions with the United States are easing. On paper, the world’s second-largest economy looks as if it may be shrugging off its worst slowdown in nearly three decades. China reported economic growth figures on Friday that suggest its economy is stabilizing after a year of consecutive quarterly declines. Wall Street has already been celebrating.
Dig a little deeper, however, and difficult problems quickly become apparent. China’s economy, a major engine of global growth, still faces some of its biggest challenges since it began opening up to the outside world four decades ago.
Some of China’s economic figures look better in part because they were notably weak a year earlier. The initial trade deal signed on Wednesday in Washington still leaves untouched American tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese-made goods. Perhaps most important, the Chinese economy is still struggling to kick an addiction to borrowing that has loaded the country with trillions of dollars in debt.