China growth slows further in Q3
Beijing, China - China’s economic growth slowed more than expected in the third quarter, official data showed on Monday, as a crackdown on the property sector and a looming energy crisis began to bite.
After a swift coronavirus bounceback, recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy is losing steam, with gross domestic product expanding 4.9 per cent on-year, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), citing an ‘unstable and uneven’ domestic rebound.
The reading was just short of the 5 per cent tipped by analysts polled by AFP - and a sharp three per centage points off the AprilJune performance.
NBS spokesman Fu Linghui said, “Current international environment uncertainties are mounting and the domestic economic recovery is still unstable and uneven.”
The economy grew only 0.2 per cent from the previous three months, the weakest since a historic contraction in the first quarter last year.
“Growth was dragged down by a slowdown in real estate, amplified recently by spillover from Evergrande’s travails,” said Oxford Economics’ head of Asia economics Louis Kuijs.
The struggles of property giant China Evergrande - which is drowning in more than US$300bn of debt - has battered sentiment among prospective buyers.
A government regulatory clampdown on the real estate sector - particularly the tightening of lending rules - has dealt a severe blow to a crucial driver of
economic growth, with a knockon effect for other parts industries including construction.
Investors are now keeping a worried eye on developments in the Evergrande saga on concerns it could impact the wider economy.
However, China’s central bank at the weekend reassured that any financial sector fallout would be controllable, while governor Yi Gang told a seminar on Sunday that authorities were watching for problems like default risks ‘due to mismanagement and breakneck expansion’ at some firms.
In a sign of the ongoing weakness in the property market, home sales by value slumped 16.9 per cent on-year last month, following a 19.7 per cent fall in August, AFP calculations based on official data showed.
Kuijs also noted there was an ‘additional hit in September’ from electricity shortages and production cuts caused by strict implementation of climate and safety targets by local governments.
The added damage, he said, was visible in weaker industrial output, which slowed to 3.1 per cent on-year.
“The weak third quarter GDP print reflected a combination of negative factors,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit, including supply chain disruptions.
Analysts at Fidelity International said that while property fears were the ‘epicentre of the shock’, economic drag was being exacerbated by the power crunch, regional lockdowns and a ‘zero COVID’ strategy that hit the services sector and disposable income.
“The only surprise in China’s published GDP figures is that they have not come in lower,” said Paras Anand, Fidelity’s AsiaPacific chief investment officer.
“Policy actions have been swift and have led to a collapse in global investor sentiment,” he said, though adding tightening measures have likely peaked for now.
Kuijs believed that although electricity shortages and production cuts will be controlled in the fourth quarter, ‘the pending real estate downturn will continue to weigh substantially on growth’.
Growth was dragged down by a slowdown in real estate, amplified recently by spillover from Evergrande’s travails
LOUIS KUIJS