China’s gross domestic product expanded 6.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, a faster rate than before the coronavirus pandemic and easily outpacing the expected performance of other big countries. GDP growth for the final quarter beat expectations, according to official data released on Monday, with the Chinese economy expanding 2.3 percent for the full year as industrial production continued to drive the country’s recovery.
The new data underlined a rapid turnaround in the world’s second-largest economy, which declined in early 2020 for the first time in more than four decades after authorities imposed an extensive lockdown to stem the pandemic’s initial outbreak. In the fourth quarter, year-on-year growth was the highest of any quarter since 2018, and China will be the only one of the world’s biggest economies that did not shrink last year.
But its positive full-year GDP growth, while ahead of global peers, was still China’s weakest in more than 40 years because of the contraction at the start of the year.
China’s benchmark CSI 300 index of Statistics, said the economy “recovered steadily” last year but cautioned that the “changing epidemic dynamics and external environment pose a multitude of uncertainties” , and that the “foundation for economic recovery is yet to be consolidated”.
China’s rebound from Covid-19 has been powered by higher industrial production, which benefited from state support and added 7.1 per cent in the fourth quarter, compared with 5.8 per cent in the previous quarter.