SMU Data and Models
October 23, 2019
China’s GDP Growth Cools to 27-Year Low
Written by Peter Wright
The official economic statistics out of China show a decline in GDP to a level slightly lower than the depths of the global recession in 2009. China’s share of global steel production was 55.9 percent in August.
Once each quarter we publish the official statistics for Chinese GDP, industrial production, consumer price inflation and fixed asset investment. We don’t know the accuracy of these numbers, but we include them in our reports because of the importance of China in the global steel scene. China’s economic statistics are never revised, which makes analysts suspicious considering the U.S. routinely makes revisions back decades. Figure 1 shows published data for the third quarter of 2019. The GDP and industrial production portions of this graph are three-month moving averages. China’s GDP grew at a rate of 6.0 percent in the second quarter of 2019, down from 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2018. Growth has gradually slowed from 9.7 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
