China revises up 2023 GDP to $17.73tr, rules out impact on 2024 figure

BEIJING: China revised upwards its 2023 gross domestic product (GDP) by 2.7 per cent to 129.4 trillion yuan ($17.73 trillion), a top statistics official said on Thursday, while releasing the fifth national economic census.

Policy support late this year has set China’s economy on track to hit a growth target of “around 5.0 per cent” as activity warmed slightly, but challenges such as potential US tariff hikes still weigh on prospects for next year.

Kang Yi, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, made the remarks at a press conference in Beijing, the capital, adding that the bureau would publish further details of the revision on its website in the next few days.China’s economy has “withstood the test of multiple internal and external risks over the past five years, and maintained a generally stable trend while progressing,” Kang said.

The fifth economic census carried out over the past five years encompassed the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had a significant impact on the economy, he said.The international environment had witnessed “profound and complex changes” since the previous such census, he added.

The revision of 2023 GDP would not have a significant impact on China’s 2024 GDP growth rate, Lin Tao, the bureau’s deputy head, told the same briefing, however.On Thursday, the World Bank raised its forecast for China’s economic growth in 2024 and 2025, but warned that subdued household and business confidence, along with headwinds in the property sector, would keep weighing it down next year.

The economic census showed changes in China’s job market, with 25.6 per cent more people employed in the tertiary industries at the end of 2023 than at the end of 2018, but secondary industries had 4.8 per cent fewer employees.

As a severe property crisis hobbles a macroeconomic rebound, employees of property developers fell 27 per cent to 2.71 million by the end of 2023 against the corresponding 2018 figure, the economic census data showed.

Overall employment in the property industry rose 40.2 per cent to stand at 14.398 million by the end of 2023 over the figure at the end of 2018.Tertiary industries range from retail to transport, catering, accommodation, finance and property, while secondary industries cover mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction, for example.