Wuhan, capital city of Central China's Hubei Province Photo: VCG

The GDP of Central China's Hubei Province, the first Chinese province hit by the COVID-19 epidemic, grew 12.9 percent in 2021, exceeding 5 trillion yuan ($790 billion) for the first time and moving back to the seventh place in the country's provincial GDP rankings, official data showed on Thursday.

The country's successful containment of the virus and favorable policy support is seen as breathing life into the local economy, which saw a shocking 5-percent contraction in 2020 but has now returned to its pre-epidemic ranking among Chinese provincial-level economies. 

Wang Zhonglin, governor of Hubei, said on Thursday in the government work report that the growth rate of the province's GDP surpassed the national average of 8.1 percent, reaching 5.01 trillion yuan, showing that the local economy has strongly recovered and revived.

Hubei has set its GDP goal for 2022 at about 7 percent, which matches the scale of local economic development, said Wang.

Analysts said that the robust recovery in 2021 came as a result of China's efficient control of the spread of the virus, which allowed local industries and enterprises to regain their businesses, while backing up the province with strong policy support. 

Hubei's GDP shrank 5 percent in 2020 to 4.34 trillion yuan, according to official data. Hubei was the first province in China to be clobbered by the COVID-19 outbreak, and it battled against the virus with a 76-day strict lockdown that severely impacted local businesses. 

The country has been supporting Hubei's economic recovery with more investment, while implementing supporting policies and measures such as tax relief and strengthening support for businesses, Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Wang said that Hubei has experienced a boom in registrations of new enterprises, with a total of 1.14 million new market entities and 1,697 major industrial enterprises over the past year, hitting a record high. 

"Hubei has reduced and cut 300 million yuan taxes as the result of the nation's supporting policies," Ye Qing, a professor at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, told the Global Times. 

Economic development conditions have been improving and major rising industries include optical devices and lithium batteries, Ye said.

Hu Junhua, a crayfish farmer in Qianjiang, Hubei, known as China's crayfish city, told the Global Times on Thursday that his crayfish sales increased by 40-50 percent in 2021. 

Hubei is not the only province that recorded GDP growth that beat expectations in 2021. 

Both Shanghai and Beijing recorded GDPs of 4 trillion yuan, with Shanghai's GDP growth hitting 8.1 percent and Beijing's GDP expanding 8.5 percent.

Meanwhile, South China's Guangdong Province recorded a GDP of 12.4 trillion yuan in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 8 percent, the country's first province whose GDP exceeded 12 trillion yuan.