China will announce its economic growth figure for the first quarter of the year on Thursday. Expect a humdinger.
Despite official efforts to rein in and rebalance the mainland's economy, it is highly likely that the pace of growth accelerated rather than slowed during the first three months of 2007, rising to about 11 per cent year on year from 10.4 per cent in the final quarter of last year.
We can be pretty confident China's rate of growth has picked up simply because the main components which contribute to the mainland's economic growth all continued to expand robustly over the first quarter.
Most notably China's exports grew by 27.9 per cent year on year in the first three months of the year, faster even than the 26.5 per cent growth rate clocked up in the first quarter of last year.
At the same time import growth slowed down, falling to 18.2 per cent compared with 24.9 per cent for the previous year.
As a result, China's trade surplus ballooned, more than doubling in size to US$46.5 billion for the first quarter, up from US$23.1 billion in the first three months of last year.
That figure alone would make a robust economic growth rate inevitable. But it is not only China's net exports that have been expanding quickly. Growth in other important constituents of the gross domestic product, including investment and private consumption, also appears to have been strong.