Editor's Note: Lin G. is a CGTN economic commentator. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of CGTN.

China released its full-year economic data for 2025 on Monday. At first glance, the headline figure is precise: real GDP expanded by 5 percent year on year, in line with a broad range of expectations and the growth target set at the beginning of the year.

For those who look only at the aggregate number, the conclusion seems straightforward. Another year, another 5 percent. Yet this reading remains confined to the surface. A closer look at the composition of that growth reveals a far more complex picture – one defined not by inertia, but by deep internal reconfiguration.

What appears externally as steady progress is, internally, the outcome of pronounced structural shifts unfolding simultaneously in opposite directions. It is precisely this contrast that defines China's economic reality in 2025.

Growth held together by structural reallocation

The most direct way to understand last year's economy is to examine where contraction occurred and where expansion accelerated.

On the contracting side, fixed asset investment in 2025 declined by 3.8 percent year on year. Within this, real estate development investment fell by 17.2 percent. If real estate development is excluded, nationwide fixed asset investment declined by only 0.5 percent, underscoring how concentrated the contraction was.

This contraction was also reflected in market activity. In 2025, sales of newly built commercial housing fell by 12.6 percent.

These are not marginal adjustments. A sector that for many years carried significant weight in overall investment experienced a double-digit contraction. And yet, against this backdrop, the economy as a whole still expanded by 5 percent, as a result of simultaneous movement in opposite directions.

The explanation lies on the other half of the balance sheet.

In 2025, fixed asset investment in the information services sector increased by 28.4 percent, the fastest among major categories. Investment in the manufacturing of aerospace vehicles and equipment rose by 16.9 percent.

From the perspective of industrial output, the pattern is equally clear. The value added of digital product manufacturing grew by 9.3 percent year on year, well above the overall growth rate. This category includes products such as industrial robots, whose output continued to expand rapidly.

New energy remains a critical component of this shift. In 2025, new energy vehicles accounted for more than half of domestic new car sales, marking a structural change in the composition of consumer demand as well as industrial output.

Innovation inputs moved in the same direction. China's R&D expenditure intensity reached 2.8 percent in 2025, an increase of 0.11 percentage point from 2024. For the first time, this figure exceeded the average level of OECD economies.

When viewed together, these figures show an economy undergoing internal reallocation at scale. Some sectors recorded rapid, even explosive growth, while others experienced sharp contraction. The coexistence of double-digit expansion and double-digit decline within the same year is not incidental; it is the result of conscious structural choice rather than spontaneous adjustment.

Planned direction and active structural governance

Understanding how such pronounced internal shifts translated into aggregate stability requires moving beyond the data of a single year.

2025 marked the final year of China's 14th Five-Year Plan, with the 15th Five-Year Plan set to begin in 2026. Over the past five years, China's economic total crossed successive milestones, stepping from 110 trillion yuan ($15.8 trillion) to 120 trillion yuan, then 130 trillion yuan, and reaching 140 trillion yuan in 2025.

These milestones, however, are not the core of the story. The defining feature of the past five years has been the emphasis on high-quality development and the cultivation of new quality productive forces – a term rooted in China's own policy framework and analytical context.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the value added of high-tech manufacturing above a designated size grew at an average annual rate of 9.2 percent, far exceeding overall economic growth. This reflects a deliberate shift toward manufacturing integrated with 5G, artificial intelligence, and advanced digital systems. Across many sectors, production environments have moved toward highly automated "lights-out" factories, with mechanical arms, automated sensing, and intelligent recognition systems becoming standard features.

This trajectory did not unfold in a vacuum. The period coincided with multiple shocks that exceeded prior expectations, including external disruptions and the ongoing process of internal policy adjustment. Policy calibration itself was not static; it evolved through trial, correction, and refinement.

What matters is not the absence of fluctuation, but the consistency of direction.

China's approach to structural transformation is not based on allowing legacy growth drivers to run their course unchecked, nor on assuming that upgrading will occur automatically. The objective has been explicit: to move up the industrial chain, to improve the quality of growth, and to avoid the structural stagnation associated with the middle-income trap. Achieving this requires active intervention, strategic prioritization, and the willingness to reallocate limited resources.

Such reallocation inevitably involves trade-offs. As resources are directed toward new productive forces, other sectors receive less support. This is not accidental, nor is it concealed. It is a function of choice.

What distinguishes China's experience is that these choices are embedded in medium- and long-term planning frameworks. Five-year plans are not isolated documents; they form a continuous sequence with clear inheritance of objectives. While the pace and path of adjustment may vary, the direction remains visible and largely predictable.

This is why, despite a sharp divergence of economic momentum, both domestic and international expectations have remained relatively stable. The process may be complex, but the destination is not improvised.

Conclusion: Reading the number beyond the number

China's 5 percent GDP growth in 2025 is not surprising. It aligns precisely with previously stated objectives. The significance of the figure lies not in its steadiness, but in what occurred beneath it: a large-scale internal reconfiguration. Without this structural movement, headline growth would be far less meaningful – and far less sustainable.

Growth, in this sense, has not been preserved by avoiding change, but by absorbing it. This ability to accommodate sharp structural shifts beneath a stable aggregate outcome defines China's current stage of development and provides the underlying logic for its transition into the next five-year planning cycle.