China's 'Solo Growth'... 2020 Economic Results Announced on the 18th

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo So-jung] China is expected to be the only major country to achieve positive economic growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Bureau of Statistics of China is scheduled to announce key economic indicators, including the 2020 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the 4th quarter GDP of 2020, at 10 a.m. local time on the 18th. Market consensus is that China will achieve an economic growth rate in the low 2% range.

According to Bloomberg News and others, China's 2020 economic growth forecast was 2.1%.

An economic growth rate of about 2.1% is the lowest since the negative growth recorded after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, indicating that China was also significantly impacted by COVID-19 last year.

The 2020 economic growth forecast also represents a sharp 4 percentage point drop compared to 6.1% in 2019, which was the lowest level in 29 years due to the trade war.

However, the market sees significance in the fact that despite the worst conditions of COVID-19, China’s economy was the only one among major countries in the world, excluding Taiwan which is not a UN member, to achieve positive growth.

The IMF projected the global economic growth rate for 2020 to be -4.4%.

Bloomberg News evaluated that "China's economic upward trend is accelerating" and that "China's share in global trade and investment has also increased due to successful COVID-19 control."

According to Bloomberg News, Homi Kharas, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in the U.S., predicted that if the current trend continues, China's GDP will surpass the U.S. GDP by 2028.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.