Coronavirus: China needs GDP growth of about 3 per cent in 2020 to meet job goals, analysts say

Beijing wants to keep the urban unemployment rate steady at about 6 per cent while creating 9 million jobs this year

The central government will need to ensure economic growth of about 3 per cent and steady an economy badly damaged by the coronavirus, analysts say

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China is relying on increased infrastructure spending to boost flagging growth, but that will not necessarily help small private businesses in the country. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:00am, 6 Jun 2020Updated: 5:04pm, 16 Nov 2020

Though China has not set an economic growth target for 2020, analysts say Beijing will need to ensure a growth rate of about 3 per cent to steady the economy and achieve its employment goals.

The Chinese government omitted an annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate at the National People’s Congress (NPC) last month after the economy was battered by the coronavirus pandemic in the first quarter of the year.

With the economy unlikely to make a rapid recovery from the 6.8 per cent contraction in the first three months of the year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told the NPC that Beijing will focus on maintaining an urban unemployment rate of around 6 per cent and creating 9 million new jobs.

Zhu Min, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and head of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told state-owned broadcaster CCTV that China would need to grow between 2 per cent and 3 per cent this year to meet the government’s goals of stabilising “employment, finance, foreign trade, foreign investment, investment and [business] expectations”.

While the government decided not to set an economic growth target, it did not mean it was not important, analysts at the Bank of China said in research published last week.