Beijing (TIP)- Hit hard by the zero-Covid policy and slump in the real estate market, China‘s economy shrank to three per cent in 2022, registering its second lowest growth rate in 50 years in the world’s second-largest economy, according to official data.

The annual GDP of China totalled 21.02 trillion yuan (USD 17.94 trillion) in 2022, falling below the 5.5 per cent official target, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. The slow pace was blamed mainly on the strictly implemented zero-Covid policy leading to periodic lockdowns and the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on big industrial firms besides the lingering real estate crisis.

This is the slowest growth of the Chinese economy since the 2.3 per cent registered in GDP in 1974.

Significantly this year, China’s GDP in terms of dollars declined from USD 18 trillion in 2021 to USD 17.94 trillion last year mainly due to a sharp rise of the dollar against RMB (the Chinese currency) in 2022.

In RMB terms, the Chinese economy last year posted 121.02 trillion yuan against the 2021 figure of 114.37 trillion yuan.

The GDP growth in the fourth quarter was 2.9 per cent year-on-year, compared with 3.9 per cent in the third quarter as it was hit hard by recurring covid lockdowns of various urban centres, including the top industrial and business hubs like Shanghai.

Industrial output, an important economic indicator, expanded by 3.6 per cent year-on-year in 2022 and 1.3 per cent in December.

China’s fixed-asset investment went up 5.1 per cent in 2022. The NBS said “despite the overall stable economic performance”, the foundation for economic recovery remains “unstable”.

The country will comprehensively deepen reform and opening-up and focus on strengthening market confidence to promote improvements of the economy to revive the economy, it said. Last year’s annual GDP growth of 3 per cent marked a slowdown from 8.4 per cent in 2021, a sharp decline blamed on a host of factors mainly China shutting itself from the outside world due to zero Covid policy. China had set a modest economic growth target of around 5.5 per cent for last year, but it remained unattainable due to the impact of the coronavirus. The urban surveyed jobless rate, meanwhile, stood at 5.5 per cent in December, down from 5.7 per cent in November amid reports that one among five persons in China was unemployed.

But according to NBS data, China’s job market remained generally stable in 2022. A total of 12.06 million new urban jobs were created last year, exceeding the annual target of 11 million, the data showed.

Source: Agencies