Year in Review: China’s Economy Struggles to Regain Early Momentum

Economists have been revising their forecasts for China’s growth almost all year long in 2023, as the economy experienced a burst of speed early on only to see momentum dwindle over the course of the year.

After Covid restrictions were scrapped in late 2022, the world’s second-largest economy benefited from robust, if uneven, growth in the first quarter of 2023. Consumption, especially in travel, dining and movie-going, rebounded during the Lunar New Year holiday in late January as a wave of infections that had swept across the country quickly tailed off.