Chinese economy hit hard for third successive quarter; GDP at a 30-year-low

Beijing – The decline in the Chinese economy that began from the beginning of this year, has continued for the third successive quarter. The Chinese economic growth has slowed to 6% even in its third quarter and is believed to be the lowest since 1992. Only a few days ago, the United States and China had revealed reaching the first stage of the trade agreement. Given the developments, the statistics have only added to Beijing’s worries.

The National Bureau of Statistics of China released the data on the countries’ economic growth in the third quarter of the year. According to the report, China could barely maintain the growth rate to a mere 6% in this quarter. In the April-June quarter, the growth rate was 6.2%. After that, the Chinese government had taken various measures, right from the devaluation of the Yuan currency to pumping added funds into the banking sector.

However, the recent decline shows that the measures did not yield success and that it had also hit the Asian markets.

Last year, US President Donald Trump started the trade war against China with the imposition of import tariffs on its goods. Additionally, President Trump took specific aggressive measures such as imposing investment restrictions as also sanctions against Chinese companies. The trade war with the United States has delivered significant blows to the Chinese economy, over the last few months and hitting the lowest GDP has come as the biggest one. Even in the first quarter of the year, Chinese economic growth had dropped to 6.4%.

Successively, the indices representing the import-export as also the manufacturing sector, considered the backbone of the Chinese economy, were consistently tumbling. Yet the ruling Chinese government was calling the state a ‘New Normal’ and was taking steps to pump added funds and more, to provide impetus to the economy. Nevertheless, the Chinese leadership was forced to acknowledge the economy was under pressure during this period. Prime Minister Li Keqiang had said, that the Chinese economy was reeling under tremendous pressure and was on a decline.

On the other hand, President Donald Trump had retorted saying that the Chinese economy was weakening because of the US-imposed tariffs. President Trump said, ‘The US tariffs have caused many companies to move from China to countries where the tariffs were not applicable. Thousands of companies are walking out of China’ and highlighted the fall in the Chinese economy. At the same time, the US media had asserted that the statistics China had published were misleading, and the actual decline in the Chinese economy was much worse.

The recent economic slowdown only corroborates the claims made by President Trump and the US media. Economist Bo Zhuang had forecast the Chinese economy slowdown to continue for the next six months. Economic analyst Julian Evans-Pritchard at the Capital Economics has denied the possibility of improvement in the Chinese economy despite the trade agreement with the United States.

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