China claims GDP growth at 8.1% in 2021, the fastest in nearly a decade
As per Chinese claim, it’s GDP has expanded at 8.1 percent in 2021, the fastest growth in nearly a decade and well above the government’s annual target of achieving a growth rate above 6 percent. To digest this, it may certainly require a pinch of salt, if not more.
More so according to another report issued by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s GDP growth is projected to moderate at around 5.5 percent in 2022. Such a sharp drop when things seem to be more under control ? Analysts say that in the near term, the spread of highly transmissible Omicron variant in Beijing, Zhuhai in South China’s Guangdong Province and North China’s Tianjin Municipality as well as resurgence of Delta variant in multiple cites has cast a shadow on the spending during the Spring Festival holidays and the economic outlook for the first quarter of 2022, though this impact is likely to fade away by the second quarter.
In 2021, China’s foreign trade volume reached $6.05 trillion, surpassing the $6 trillion milestone for the first time, according to customs data released on Friday. The robust expansion, beat the market expectation and eclipsed most of other major economies in two-year terms, claims the Government. The country’s total GDP in 2021 reached 114.37 trillion yuan ($18 trillion), according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.
In 2021, China’s GDP per capita was around $12,551, according to the NBS, nearing that of a “high-income country” as defined by the World Bank and overtaking the global average GDP per capita.
The economic volume in 2021 represented an increase of $2 trillion compared with 2020, or roughly the equivalent of world’s 8th largest economy Italy’s GDP in 2020 based on the Global Times’ calculation.
“The scale of incremental economic output in 2021 also hit a new high,” Tian Yun, former vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, told the Global Times. He estimated that from 2020 to 2021, China’s economic increment has contributed an overwhelming 50 percent to that of world, highlighting China’s role as the anchor and stabilizer for the global economy.
In 2020, China was the only major economy in the world to eke out an expansion, with a GDP growth rate of 2.3 percent. If taking out the base effect and translating into two-year terms for an objective evaluation, China’s average GDP growth was 5.1 percent from 2020 to 2021, also leading most of the world’s economies, analysts said.
According to a World Bank report, US GDP is expected to grow 5.6 percent in 2021, and that translated to an estimated average growth rate of 1.05 percent in 2020-2021 period.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, China’s GDP grew at 4.0 percent. The economic growth in the first, second, and third quarter were 18.3 percent, 7.9 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively.
“China’s quarterly GDP expansion gradually tapered down throughout the year. The downward pressure culminated to a height in the third quarter, but most were cleared out in the fourth quarter, which means the economy was bottomed out and could set off a head start this year,” Tian said, also taking note of a larger base at the second half of 2020.
China’s factory output – in spite of weak demand abroad and a disrupted supply chain at home – surprisingly continued its vibrant streak in 2021, as claimed. while investment in manufacturing and real estate was subdued and the resurgence of coronavirus weighed on consumption.
According to NBS, retail sales, a reflection of nationwide consumption, soared 12.5 percent year-on-year to 44.08 trillion yuan last year. Industrial added-value expanded 9.6 percent, and fixed-asset investment rose 4.9 percent to hit 54.45 trillion yuan.
