Econintersect: China’s GDP for the fourth quarter grew by 7.7% year-over-year. 
This was higher than the 7.5% government target for 2013 and also beat the 7.6% consensus estimate by economists. The government revised the growth for 2012 down to 7.7%. This caused CNN Money to use the term “stagnating” in reference to Chinese economic growth. If repeated annual economic growth of 7.7% is stagnation the entire world should stagnate. The South China Post headline used “flat” to describe the growth which may be a better term, but what is wrong with “sustained“?
Some other economic numbers from China for December 2013:
- Industrial output grew 9.7% year-over-year;
- Retail sales rose 13.6% y-o-y;
Fixed-asset investment grew 19.6% for the entire year 2013.
Reported numbers were all slightly below estimates and less than the corresponding periods a year ago.
Bloomberg reports that Asian stock markets are generally down fractionally to more than 1% following the Chinese data releases.
Sources:
- China’s 7.7% GDP growth beats official target (Sophia Yan, CNN Money, 19 January 2014)
- China GDP growth last year flat at 7.7 per cent (Victoria Ruan, South China Post, 20 January 2014)
- Asian Stocks Fall, After China GDP Data; Nintendo Sinks (Jonathan Burgos, Bloomberg, 20 January 2014)
