China GDP: economy surged record 18.3 per cent in first quarter compared to a year earlier, but slowed versus fourth quarter

China’s economy grew by 18.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Friday.

This is the highest quarterly year-on-year growth rate since data first began being published in 1993.

This was just below expectations in the median survey of Bloomberg analysts, which had predicted 18.5 per cent growth between January and March.

“The economic recovery in the first quarter of this year continued, and positive factors are accumulating. At the same time, we must also see that the Covid-19 epidemic is still spreading globally, the international landscape is complicated and severe, the foundation for domestic economic recovery is not yet solid, and some service industries and small and micro enterprises are still facing more difficulties in their production and operation,” said NBS spokeswoman Liu Aihua.

Given that the year-over-year figure is skewed upwards by the low comparison base, analysts focused on first quarter growth compared to the fourth quarter for a better view of the actual trend on the economy.

In inflation and seasonally-adjusted terms, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter this year on a quarter-over-quarter basis, down from a revised 3.2 per cent growth in the fourth quarter, missing the 1.4 per cent rise expected by the median forecast of economists in the Bloomberg survey. The NBS revised the fourth quarter growth rate up from 2.6 per cent originally reported.