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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 19 Oct 202619 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
China\u2019s economy has grown faster than expected in the most recent quarter amid booming exports underpinned by artificial intelligence, according to official figures.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 4.5 percent in the July-September period from the same quarter a year earlier, picking up from 4.3 percent growth in the second quarter and beating most analysts\u2019 forecasts, figures released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics\u00a0showed.<\/p>\n
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During the first nine months of the year, GDP grew 4.6 percent year-on-year, according to the preliminary figures.<\/p>\n
While China\u2019s technology-related exports have surged during the AI boom, growth in the world\u2019s second-largest economy has been dampened by weak domestic demand and a sagging property market.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s ruling Communist Party has set a GDP growth target of 4.5 to 5 percent for 2026, which would be among the slowest expansions in decades, excluding during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Chinese exports surged more than 16 percent in the first three quarters of the year to reach 23.19 billion yuan ($3.47bn), according to the official data, largely due to strong demand for semiconductors and other tech-related goods.<\/p>\n
Retail sales, a key measure of domestic consumption, increased 1.1 percent year-on-year in September and 2.6 percent during the first nine months of 2026.<\/p>\n
Industrial production, which measures output in sectors such as manufacturing and mining, rose\u00a05.5 percent in September, taking growth in\u00a0the first three quarters to\u00a05.3 percent.<\/p>\n
Investment in fixed assets, which covers spending on real estate, factories and machinery, edged up 0.7 percent last month but contracted 7.2 percent during the January-September period.<\/p>\n
Zhiguo He, a finance professor at Stanford University\u2019s Graduate School of Business who studies the Chinese economy, said that while China\u2019s economy is on track to hit official targets, Beijing will be wary of the continuing reliance on export-driven growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Beijing is getting 4.5 percent as wanted,\u201d He told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cA managed slow slowdown is the best Beijing can hope for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cReal estate is still shrinking. This is what Beijing wanted and a good thing, and China\u2019s households have been adapting their expectations based on this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GDP growth picks up from Q2 amid AI-driven boom in exports. Published On 19 Oct 202619 Oct 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[77,64,63,99,6073,512,164,10523,44],"class_list":["post-933571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asia-pacific","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-business-and-economy","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-international-trade","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}