A crane lifts a CMA CGM Group shipping container from China onto the Hapag-Lloyd Terminal at the Port of Savannah in Savannah, Ga. China's economy grew by just 6.1% last year, a sign that the trade war with the U.S. has taken a toll. Stephen B. Morton/AP hide caption
The world's second-largest economy cooled to its slowest pace in nearly three decades in 2019, with China posting year-on-year growth of 6.1% — a further sign that the protracted trade war with the U.S. has taken a toll.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China released the new data on Friday, the same day that it said the country's birth rate had also fallen — to its lowest level since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
The pace of growth in gross domestic product for 2019 was down from 6.6% the previous year and marked the smallest annual increase since 1990.
Beijing's policymakers had projected growth of between 6% and 6.5% for the year.
China's GDP, worth an estimated $14.4 trillion, is second in size only to the U.S. Its economy has been undergoing a painful shift away from heavy industry and commodities. Instead, Beijing has aimed for a more consumer-based economy.
The latest GDP figures, while exceptionally strong by the standards of many other countries, are a long way from the heady days of 10% or more growth barely a decade ago.
In 2007, the Chinese economy grew by a blistering 14%.
In recent years, China's leaders have struggled to balance competing demands of maintaining high rates of growth while simultaneously minimizing the consequences of years of debt-fueled stimulus spending. Last year, authorities took steps to limit wasteful infrastructure investments in an effort to rein in unsustainable levels of local government and corporate debt.
Friday's data come days after a "Phase 1" trade deal between the U.S. and China, seen as a step toward ending an 18-month-old trade dispute, which has seen damaging tariffs imposed by both sides.
The new trade deal eases U.S. tariffs on some popular consumer goods manufactured in China, such as cell phones, but leaves in place hundreds of billions of dollars of other tariffs, including on components that U.S. factories use to assemble finished products.
A woman carries a baby born on China's National Day at a hospital on Oct. 1, 2019 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province of China. VCG/Visual China Group via Getty Ima hide caption
Two-child policy fails to take hold
Meanwhile, new birth-rate figures show that Beijing has so far failed to reverse the effects of its longtime one-child policy — a change that policymakers say is necessary to forestall the long-term economic consequences of an aging and shrinking population.
In 2019, there were 10.48 births per 1,000 people, the lowest birth rate since 1949, the year the PRC was founded. The number was down from 10.94 in 2018.
The one-child policy was put in place in 1979 by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who feared that the country's exploding population would hold back economic development.
However, by 2016, China's leadership came to realize that the policy had been too successful and officially relaxed it.
Experts say that improved education and higher incomes in China have led to delayed marriage and childbirth, and that once-strict government restrictions on births have made one-child households the norm.
"China should have stopped the policy 28 years ago. Now it's too late," Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a longtime critic of the country's family planning policies, told The Guardian last year.
By 2050, a third of China's people will be 60 years of age or older, according to current projections, placing a significant burden on the government to care for the elderly.
NPR's Emily Feng in Beijing contributed to this report.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm5wci5vcmcvMjAyMC8wMS8xNy83OTcyMzA1MTgvaW4tY2hpbmEtZ2RwLWdyb3d0aC1mYWxscy10by1sb3dlc3QtbGV2ZWwtaW4tbmVhcmx5LTMwLXllYXJz0gEA?oc=5
2020-01-17 12:17:00Z
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