China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have conducted research in several regions in China, seeking to determine the economic performance in the first quarter of the current year.
According to the research, in the first two months of the year China’s economic development came under downward pressure due to the impact of the Chinese New Year holiday, while it showed a recovery in March due to better demand.
Liu Xueliang, associate researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), pointed out that slower demand in the global market arising from protectionism has resulted in slow growth in Chinese industries. However, insufficient domestic demand has been the main reason. He went on to say that China’s GDP growth will slow down from 6.7 percent in 2018 to 6.0-6.5 percent in 2019, and will subsequently slow further to 6.0 percent or 5.0 percent, all of which points to China’s need to speed up the implementation of reforms.