Trade a major force for China's provincial economic growth in H1

World
Europe

By CGTN’s Du Zhongyan

China's local governments are releasing their economic scorecards for the first half of 2017.

At least twelve provinces have entered the “trillion club”, based on their fresh gross domestic production (GDP) data.

Guangdong Province maintained the largest GDP volume with nearly 4,196 billion yuan (621 billion US dollars) for the first half of this year.

VCG Photo

International trade was one of the major contributors to the province's better-than-expected performance.

Guangdong's import and export value in goods jumped to about 3,300 billion yuan (488 billion US dollars) from January to June.

Taking the vast volume into details, Guangzhou contributed almost 105 billion yuan (15 billion US dollars) increments.

And this is the first time Guangzhou’s GDP increment surpassed its major “competitors” Shanghai and Beijing.

For growth rate, Chongqing Municipality, with 10.5 percent growth rate, sits at the head of that table, followed Guizhou Province, another double digits growth of 10.4 percent.

GDP growth rate in H1 2017 /CGTN Photo

Qin Yao, vice director of the Chongqing Statistics Bureau, said Chongqing has kept a stable momentum of development.

Wang Xiaoguang, a research fellow from the China National School of Administration, said international trade has bounced back this year, forcing several provinces' economic performances to warm up.

The performance of real estate markets varied based on different locations.

But a large number of local governments are speeding up efforts to clear their inventories.

In Jiangsu, the unsold floor space for commercial properties fell 13 percent by the end of June. In comparison, Tianjin's unsold floor space plummeted 36.5 percent.

Six provinces, including Zhejiang, have not released their economic data.

Analysts are optimistic about the unpublished data, as Zhejiang has carried out excellent import and export works.

Liaoning and Gansu Provinces, together with Beijing Municipality, were at the bottom of the list, with 2.1 percent, five percent and 6.8 percent respectively, even lower than the “country line” of 6.9 percent.