China trade economy File photo: VCG

The Chinese economy is forecast to grow 5.2 percent in 2023, Chinese Premier Li Qiang said at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 on Tuesday.
 
The figure beats the government's pre-set yearly GDP growth target of around 5 percent, and is in line with economists' projections, a strong rebuttal to some Western media outlets' hype of the "China collapse" theory. China is set to release its annual economic data for 2023 on Wednesday.  

Economists interviewed by the Global Times said such growth banked on better-than-expected foreign trade and a strong recovery in domestic spending and it means that the world's second largest economy is among the fastest growing major economies last year, despite headwinds of anti-globalization, geopolitical conflicts, lackluster trade and the lingering effect of the COVID pandemic. 

Zhou Maohua, a macroeconomic analyst at Everbright Bank, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the growth for the first nine months of 2023 hit 5.2 percent, which sets a solid base for the annual rise.

"Domestic demand and consumption have shown signs of steady recovery in October and November, pushing the fourth quarter GDP to grow at 5 percent or higher," Zhou said. "Also, the country's expanding electricity use data is positive."

In the first 11 months of 2023, the country's electricity consumption, a key barometer of economic activity, rose 6.3 percent from a year ago to about 8.4 trillion kilowatt-hours, data from National Energy Administration revealed in December.

China's 2023 GDP likely increased 5.2 percent over 2022, a Bloomberg report said on Tuesday, citing economists surveyed by Bloomberg. 

According to a Reuters poll of economists, the median forecasts of 2023 growth for China is 5.2 percent, with a 5.3-percent-annual-growth projected for the fourth quarter.

Experts pointed out that the Chinese economy has demonstrated remarkable resilience in 2023, as it emerged from the pandemic. They noted that the Chinese economy will continue to forge ahead in 2024 despite choppy waters in the world.

According to a report from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Center for Forecasting Science, China's economy will maintain stable growth in 2024, with forecasted GDP growth hitting 5.3 percent.

"In my opinion, the economic growth target for China in 2024 should not be lower than 5 percent," Yu Yongding, academic advisor to the CF40 and Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in a recent article.

"In 2024, we expect China's economy to grow by around 5 percent, which would be very impressive," Li Daokui, director of Tsinghua University's Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking (ACCEPT), said at a recent forum.