China Daily published an article that an author wrote commenting on China’s economic focus for the year 2023. The article said that a Central Economic Work Conference was held on December 15 and 16, 2022. The conference provided a comprehensive plan for China’s economic work in 2023. In the plan, the recovery and expansion of consumer spending has a high priority and thus the expansion of domestic demand is the focal task for China’s economic work.
The article acknowledged that, for the past three years, China’s economy has been impacted negatively by international relations and by COVID. Consumer spending has also gone down significantly. In the first three quarters of 2022, China’s GDP growth rates were 4.8 percent, 0.4 percent, and 3.9 percent, respectively. The growth rate in those three quarters for total retail sales of consumer goods was 3.3 percent, -4.6 percent, and 3.5 percent, respectively. This shows that residents’ consumption dragged down the GDP.
The world economy is very likely to slow down in 2023. Western countries may be trapped in inflation and enter recession. Thus the external demand for China is likely to drop significantly. In fact, this has already happened. The growth rate for China’s exports in January 2022 was 24.1 percent over the same period a year ago, but only 5.7 percent in September 2022. It could keep sliding in 2023.
Therefore, China’s economic growth will have to rely on domestic consumption.
Source: China Today, January 10, 2023
http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/zw2018/bktg/202301/t20230110_800318097.html