Analysis: China’s Economy Requires More Effort to Sustain Recovery

Official data indicate that the Chinese economy had a good start to the year. However, a sustainable recovery will require further efforts.

Based on my analysis of year-on-year growth in the Index of Services Production and value-added industrial output in the first two months, GDP likely grew 5.2% year-on-year in the period, on par with the levels seen in October and November, but down 0.5 percentage points from the whole of 2024.

Data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that in the first two months, manufacturing investment grew rapidly, and the sales-to-production ratio of large industrial enterprises declined year-on-year. This is not conducive to the recovery of prices or capacity utilization.