China Power

Chinese Media: Actually, Our Economy Is Doing Just Fine

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China Power

Chinese Media: Actually, Our Economy Is Doing Just Fine

China’s state media fired back at Western speculation the Chinese economy is headed for a fall.

Chinese Media: Actually, Our Economy Is Doing Just Fine
Credit: China renminbi image via Shutterstock

China released its growth data for the first quarter of 2014 this week. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China achieved 7.4 percent economic growth during the first three months of this year — China’s lowest quarterly growth since 2012, but still on pace to meet the “soft target” of 7.5 percent growth for the year.

However, most Western media outlets did not take this as encouraging news. The New York Times opened its story by saying the growth rate “confirm[ed] the concerns of investors and economists.” The Times article also argued that, because China doesn’t release annualized economic growth figures (comparing each quarter with the previous quarter), most of the growth represented by the 7.4 year-on-year figure “actually took place during the second, third and fourth quarters of last year.” The Times cited “private economists” as estimating that China’s annualized growth rate was much lower, somewhere around 5.5 percent.

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