China GDP growth last year was 6.1 per cent, slowest rate for 29 years

China’s economy grew by 6.1 per cent in 2019, the lowest growth rate since political turmoil ravaged the country in 1990, the government announced on Friday

Figure comes amid a fierce US trade war, with industrial production down to 5.7 per cent last year and retail sales also slowing to 8.0 per cent

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Published: 10:01am, 17 Jan 2020Updated: 2:29pm, 16 Mar 2020

China’s economy grew by 6.1 per cent in 2019, the lowest annual growth rate for 29 years, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Friday.

The gross domestic product (GDP) figure came in a year in which the Chinese economy was hammered by US tariffs as a result of the trade war. The new data comes a day after China and the United States signed a long-waited phase one deal on Wednesday, marking something of a ceasefire in the trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

However, despite falling to a new low since 1990, when political turmoil drove economic growth down to 3.9 per cent, the 6.1 per cent rate met the target range of between 6.0 per cent and 6.5 per cent set by the central government at the beginning of last year, but was below the market expectation of 6.2 per cent.

The headline figure was in line with forecasts of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for China’s economic growth this year.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the country’s GDP growth rate was unchanged at 6.0 per cent from the July-September period. However, this matched the lowest quarterly growth on record.