No problem meeting growth target
Print Edition
CHINA will have no problem meeting its economic growth target of around 6.5 percent this year and may even beat it, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.
The average GDP growth reached 7.2 percent for the past five years — the quickest among the major economies, said Ning Jizhe, director of the bureau.
Analysts have expected that full-year growth would meet or exceed the government’s target after the world’s second-largest economy expanded by a stronger-than-expected 6.9 percent in the first half. The expansion was fueled by heavy government infrastructure spending and a property boom.
If growth does beat last year’s 6.7 percent — the lowest in 26 years — it would mark the first acceleration in the growth rate in seven years.
China’s economy has gathered fresh momentum amid stable growth and an improved industrial structure. The effects from supply-side reforms over the past five years boosted the economy, Ning said.
Economic structure has improved with consumption and services industries contributing to more than half the growth, overtaking investment and manufacturing industries.
Momentum has also shifted to new industries, new commercial operations and new business models.
New industries incorporate both high-technology and emerging industries, new commercial operations include shared-economy and online sales, and new business models are increasingly being created by traditional retailers, Ning said.
The bureau’s data showed new industries, new commercial operations and new business models contributed to 14.8 percent of total GDP in 2015.
“Characteristics in China’s ‘new normal’ economic development has been more significant, whether from the perspective of change of speed, improvement of structure, or shift of momentum,” said Ning. “The new characteristics not only support China’s economy, but also bring new jobs and income to the mass public.”
He also said China’s survey-based unemployment rate was 4.83 percent in September, the lowest since 2012.
Some 9.74 million new jobs were created in China’s urban regions from January to August, which means the country has already fulfilled 88.5 percent of its official goal to create 11 million new jobs in 2017.
The number of migrant workers leaving their hometowns rose 2.1 percent in the second quarter compared with the same period of last year, Ning said.
More than 13 million new jobs were created each year from 2013 to 2016, and the unemployment rate has been stable at around 5 percent. The bureau’s survey-based jobless rate is usually higher than the registered jobless rate released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, which came in at 3.95 percent at the end of the second quarter.
Creating more jobs to stabilize unemployment is a priority for the government as millions of workers face the prospect of redundancy due to mergers and reorganization in industries bogged down by overcapacity.
China aims to maintain the registered urban unemployment rate at under 4.5 percent for 2017.
Disposable income was 23,821 yuan (US$3,625) per capita in 2016, up 7,311 yuan from 2012.
Energy efficiency also improved over the past five years as energy consumption per GDP unit fell nearly 18 percent from 2012.
China’s economy has also been more open with higher-quality foreign trade and use of foreign direct investment.
The nation’s imports and exports accounted for more than 11 percent of the global trade last year, and use of foreign direct investment in high-tech service industries soared 86.1 percent year on year.
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