China’s Economy Grows 4.5 Percent in the Third Quarter on Strong Exports

China’s economy grew 4.5 percent in the July-to-September quarter compared with a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday, a modest improvement from 4.3 percent in the second quarter and slightly better than most forecasts.

Measured against the previous three months, output rose 1.2 percent, according to figures reported by the Asia News Network. Over the first nine months of the year, the economy expanded 4.6 percent, which keeps it inside the government’s 2026 target range of 4.5 to 5 percent. That target is among the slowest growth goals Beijing has set in decades outside the pandemic years, Al Jazeera noted.

Exports did much of the work. Shipments abroad rose more than 16 percent in the first three quarters, driven mainly by global demand for semiconductors and other technology goods, Al Jazeera reported. Industrial production rose 5.5 percent in September from a year earlier and 5.3 percent for the first nine months.

Spending at home remained the weak spot. Retail sales, a key gauge of consumer demand, rose 1.1 percent in September, faster than in August but still sluggish, and were up 2.6 percent for the year to date. Fixed-asset investment, which covers property, factories and machinery, edged up 0.7 percent in September but was down 7.2 percent for the first nine months, held back by a property market that has been contracting for several years. The surveyed urban jobless rate was 5.2 percent in September, down slightly from August, the Asia News Network reported.

Chinese officials pointed to the figures as evidence of the economy’s resilience, and the stronger quarter gives policymakers a little more room to hold off on broad new stimulus. Some economists see the numbers as close to what Beijing intended. Zhiguo He, a finance professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, told Al Jazeera that the government appears to be getting the growth it wanted, and that a managed slowdown, with real estate continuing to shrink while households adjust, is about the best outcome the leadership can hope for.

The heavy reliance on exports carries risks of its own. Factory output and overseas sales have kept growth on target even as Chinese households hold back on spending, a pattern that leaves the economy exposed to any slowdown in global demand for electronics and to trade friction with major partners.

The government will need steady growth in the final quarter to stay within its target for the full year.