China's GDP estimates strong in second quarter

By CGTN's Mi Jiayi

China's second quarter financial figures will be out soon, with many predicting a 6.8 percent GDP growth for the last three months.

Analysts said the three key factors affecting the country's economy are investment, exports and consumption.

Investment in the property sector has been cooling due to stricter government regulations, but other types, such as those in fixed assets and manufacturing, continue stable growth.

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"Investment in the manufacturing sector is seeing some good growth this year," said Lian Ping, chief economist of the Bank of Communications. "We know that it suffered a huge tumble during the second half of 2015 to 2016. But since then, the government has begun to help industry, and the demand for manufactured products is recovering."

Investment in infrastructure had a very obvious leap in the first quarter, but is now slowing to more stable growth in the second.

According to Lian, PPP (public-private partnership) projects played an important role in that because they linked the government, banks and private capital together.

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Besides, things were looking better on the export side, due to a warming global demand in the past few months.

Latest figures showed China's export volume in June grew 11.3 percent year-on-year, beating expectations and well above last month's figure of 8.7 percent.

"I think (in the) US, although its GDP is not as strong as we expected, it's still in good shape, so export to the US is growing. Also in European countries, economies are picking up now," said Xu Mingqi, a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science. "So demand for importing goods, for Chinese export products are also growing. I think in the second half they will be maintaining a rather positive situation."

According to Lian and Xu, consumption figures will remain steady in the second half, and play a supportive role for reaching the government's GDP growth target of 6.5 percent for the year.