China's economy enters positive territory: experts

China's economy showed bumpy recovery with its main goals achieved successfully in 2023, although the country faced multiple challenges, including a sluggish global economic recovery, news outlet Yicai reported on Tuesday.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the country's gross domestic product posted a growth of 5.2 percent year-on-year in 2023, hitting a record high of 126.06 trillion yuan ($17.63 trillion). The figure expanded 5.2 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of last year.

The country's economic data in December and the fourth quarter of 2023 showed the economy witnessed more positive, comprehensive and multi-dimensional changes, and a number of indicators on the production and demand sides achieved more dynamic, widespread and all-round improvement, said Pang Ming, chief economist with global consultancy JLL China.

China remains the ballast of global economic growth, Pang added. With the support of many positive factors, including the steady and strong growth of industrial output, consumption becoming the main growth momentum, and the acceleration and effectiveness of investment, China's industrial transformation and upgrading have been speed-up, the driving force of economic development has been enhanced, and high-quality development has been steadily promoted.

Recently, many international institutions and business organizations have raised their expectations for China's economic growth, saying that China is still the biggest engine of global economic growth. The country's contribution of the global economic growth will be more than 30 percent in 2023.

Date from the NBS showed that the retail sales of consumer goods climbed 7.2 percent year-on-year to 47.15 trillion yuan last year, and the retail sales of services surged 20 percent year-on-year.

In December, the retail sales of consumer goods rose 7.4 percent year-on-year and 0.42 percent from the previous month.

The annual contribution of final consumption expenditure to China's economic growth was 82.5 percent last year, improving by 43.1 percentage points year-on-year.

In 2023, consumption became the main driving force for economic growth again, said Kang Yi, head of the NBS.

Kang predicted that consumption will maintain decent growth in the next stage, as there are many favorable conditions to support its continuous recovery.

China's consumption potential is still huge, said Kang, adding that the super-large market with a population of over 1.4 billion, the steady advancement of urbanization and the upgrading of consumption structure have provided broad space for the growth of consumption.

Also, the employment situation is generally improving with the economic recovery, which may bring higher incomes to residents, providing a solid foundation for the improvement of consumption power.

The fixed-asset investment went up 3 percent year-on-year in 2023 to stand at 50.3 trillion yuan, with manufacturing investment and infrastructure investment rising by 6.5 percent and 5.9 percent, respectively, according to the NBS.

The growth rate of fixed-asset investment in Jan-Dec period was 0.1 percentage points higher than that in the Jan-Nov period. Moreover, the figure of the manufacturing investment and infrastructure investment were higher 0.2 and 0.1 percentage points, respectively.

The fall in enterprises profits narrowed, which is good for manufacturing investment, and the rising profits of industrial enterprises drove the enthusiasm of enterprise investment, said Liu Xiangdong, chief analyst at investment management agency Eastern Spring Capital.

Due to the traditional industries transformation and upgrading, and cultivation and expansion of strategic emerging industries to drive manufacturing investment, the high-tech industries saw strong growth, with investment up 10.3 percent year-on-year in 2023. Specifically, investment in high-tech manufacturing and high-tech services sectors expanded by 9.9 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively, Liu said.