China’s gross domestic product growth slowed to 6.9 per cent in 2015, official data showed on Tuesday, the poorest annual rate in a quarter of a century for the world’s second-biggest market, a building anxiety for international investors.
The functionality of China, a leading driver of the world market, is an important issue for international investors, and its fourth quarter growth also slowed to 6.8 per cent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
China’s leaders — who’d set a goal of “about seven per cent” for GDP increase in 2015 — are looking to transform the nation ‘s economic model away from the investment and exports of the past to one more oriented towards national consumer demand.
“The market is in the procedure for stabilization, but it hasn’t stabilized yet,” Liao Qun, chief economist at Citic Bank International in Hong Kong, told AFP.
The structural transformation was still underway, it included, calling it “a critical period during which challenges must be overcome and issues must be worked out”.
“The job of comprehensively deepening the reform continues to be hefty,” the body said.
But while some sectors will find overcapacity and destocking decrease, he pointed to new places including sustainable energy automobiles and on-line retail as growing rapidly.
As such, he said, “We believe in 2016 China’s economic growth will stay constant. We’re assured in that.”
Citic Bank International’s Liao said there was “not much of a chance” for a further sudden fall this year.
However he warned,”The market will need additional loosening of monetary and fiscal policies. Falling exports as a result of outside surroundings and falling investment in the property sector will be the largest challenges faced by China in the forthcoming year.”
China’s industrial production, which quantifies output at factories, workshops and mines, increased 5.9 per cent year-on-year in December, the NBS said, down from 6.2 per cent in November.
Those results fell short of economists’ expectations, based on a survey by Bloomberg News, which called retail sales increasing 11.3 per cent year-on-year in the month and industrial creation growing 6.0 per cent.
As the economic growth figures arrived in line with expectations yet Chinese stocks were level in late morning.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.04 percent at 2,914.96, having grown 0.71 per cent soon after the amounts were released.

Sudden moves in the yuan exchange rate — after a surprise devaluation in August — have affected investors in recent weeks, who stress that the actual image is worse than shown and authorities might not possess the capacity to execute reform and handle the transition to a more market-driven economy.