A worker at a factory in China’s Jiangsu province earlier this month.
Photo:
str/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
BEIJING—China’s economy grew 7.9% from a year earlier in the second quarter, slowing sharply from the 18.3% year-over-year growth that was recorded in the first three months of the year, as the low base of comparison from the year-earlier period tapered off.
Economists widely expected Chinese economic growth to trend lower beginning in the second quarter and through the end of the year.
After recording a historic 6.8% contraction in the first quarter of 2020 due to Covid-19 outbreaks, China’s economy rebounded to growth in the April-to-June period and reported higher year-over-year growth rates through the remaining quarters of the year.
Thursday’s 7.9% economic growth was in line with expectations from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
Compared with the first quarter of this year, China’s GDP rose 1.3% in the second quarter, accelerating from a 0.6% quarter-to-quarter increase in the first three months, according to data released by Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics.
In the first half of the year, China’s GDP grew 12.7% from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said.
—Grace Zhu
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Appeared in the July 15, 2021, print edition as ‘China’s Growth Slows To 7.9%.’