Roaring exports lifted China’s economic growth in the third quarter of this year, with factory output growing much faster than consumer spending. China’s GDP grew by 4.5% year-on-year between July and September, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported on Monday. The figures were better than economists had expected and up from the second quarter’s growth rate of 4.3%.
China’s economy has now grown by 4.6% in the first nine months of the year, putting it on track to hit the government’s 2026 target of 4.5%-5% growth without extra stimulus measures. Industrial production rose 5.5% in September, up from 5.2% in August, while retail sales only increased 1.1%, up from 0.4%. Duncan Wrigley, the chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Beijing’s policymakers were likely to conclude that their efforts to stabilise headline growth in the third quarter were successful.
Manufacturing output growth remained robust at 6.0% year on year in September, buoyed up by stronger export demand for electronics, AI-related equipment and autos,” Wrigley said. However, fixed-asset investment fell 7.2% over the first nine months, property investment tumbled by 20.6%, and infrastructure spending remained weak. Data last week showed that China’s exports surged by more than a third in September, lifted by a rise in shipments of electronics related to AI.
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