Workers on a production line at a plant in Beijing last week.
Photo: wu hong/Shutterstock
BEIJING—China’s economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter from a year earlier, slowing sharply from the previous quarter’s 7.9% growth rate, as power shortages and supply-chain problems added to the impact from Beijing’s efforts to rein in the real estate and technology sectors.
While many economists expected China’s year-over-year growth to trend lower in the second half of 2021, based in part on statistical comparisons to last year, the scale of the third-quarter slowdown was sharper than expected, falling short of the 5.1% growth forecast by economists polled last week by The Wall Street Journal.
The slower-than-expected gross domestic product growth reflects a range of factors, including policy makers’ decision to pare back stimulus enacted in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic last year; a crackdown on the technology, private education and real-estate sectors; energy snafus caused in part by soaring coal prices and more aggressive energy targets; and disruptions to the supply chain caused by Covid-19 outbreaks, semiconductor shortages and port shutdowns.
When compared with the second quarter, China’s GDP inched up just 0.2% in the three months ended Sept. 30, according to data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics. In the second quarter, China’s GDP rose 1.3% from the prior quarter.
Despite the third-quarter slowdown, economists are generally confident that the Chinese economy will be able to make senior leaders’ annual GDP growth target of 6% or more, which was set in March.
For the first nine months of the year, China’s GDP expanded 9.8% compared with a year earlier, the statistics bureau said.
Write to Jonathan Cheng at [email protected]
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