China’s GDP in Q1 exceeds expectations

According to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the Chinese economy continued to expand in the first quarter of 2017 by 6.9% year-on-year. The recent growth rate was slightly faster than the economists’ expectations which called for an increase of 6.8% in Q1 in a Reuters’ poll. This was also the fastest pace of growth since Q3 of 2015, the data showed.

The rise in the country’s GDP in Q1 was mainly driven by the 9.1% growth on a yearly basis in real estate investment. Industrial output was up by 7.6% in March, especially steel output reaching a record high. The data also showed that consumption accelerated and contributed to the growth in Q1 by 77.2%. Retail sales were up by 10.9% in March after a slowdown in the first two months.

However, many analyst argue that the country’s economic growth can ease later in 2017 as the stimulus measures taken earlier will start to lose their impacts and local authorities may take even tougher measures to keep the rising home prices under control.

The government has set the target growth as 6.5% for 2017, slightly lower than the target of 6.5-7% for 2016 and the actual growth of 6.7% for last year. After the GDP result of last year, the Premier also defined a growth of 6.5% for 2017 as “not easy to meet.”