China Revises GDP for 2023, World Bank Raises Forecast for 2024, 2025 – Economy

hina revised its gross domestic product (GDP) for 2023 by 2.7 percent to 129.4 trillion yuan ($17.73 trillion), a senior statistics official said on Thursday when releasing the fifth national economic census.

Policy support late this year has put China’s economy on track to hit a growth target of “around 5 percent” as activity warmed slightly, but challenges such as potential U.S. tariff increases still weigh on the outlook for next year.

Kang Yi, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, made the remarks at a news conference in the capital Beijing, adding that the bureau would release more details of the revision on its website in the next few days.

China’s economy has “withstood the test of numerous internal and external risks over the past five years and maintained a generally stable trend thereafter,” Kang said.

The fifth economic census conducted in the last five years covered the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a significant impact on the economy, he said.

The international environment has experienced “profound and complex changes” since the last census, he added.

However, the 2023 GDP revision would not have a significant impact on China’s 2024 GDP growth rate, Lin Tao, the bureau’s deputy chief, said in the same briefing.

On Thursday, the World Bank raised its forecast for China’s economic growth in 2024 and 2025, but warned that subdued household and business confidence and headwinds in the real estate sector would continue to weigh on next year.

The economic census showed changes in the Chinese labor market: at the end of 2023, 25.6 percent more people were employed in the tertiary industry than at the end of 2018, but there were 4.8 percent fewer in the secondary industry.

As a severe housing crisis hampers a macroeconomic recovery, the number of employees at real estate developers fell 27 percent to 2.71 million by the end of 2023 compared to the corresponding figure in 2018, economic census data showed.

Total employment in the real estate industry increased by 40.2 percent to 14.398 million by the end of 2023 compared to the end of 2018.

Tertiary industries range from retail to transportation, hospitality, accommodation, finance and real estate, while secondary industries include mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction.

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