On October 19th, Chinese State Statistics Bureau released the latest macroeconomic statistics of 2016. In the first three quarters of the year, the GDP of China reached 7.91 trillion USD， growing by 6.7% at comparable prices compared with a year earlier and contributing a quarter of world economic growth.

Chinese Economy is making progress while maintaining stability and quality, which is better than expected. It is not easy to achieve 6.7% growth on a base as high as 10 trillion USD (GDP of China in 2015), and the increment from 6.7% growth is 800 billion, even higher than that from the double-digit growth before and equal to the size of a middle-income country’s the overall economy.

China’s Economy Maintains Stability as a Whole. In Q3, China’s GDP achieved 6.7% year on year growth, flat with that in the Q1 and Q2. To be specific, more remarkably steady progress is seen in the industrial sector, which grew 6.0 percent year-on-year and 6.1 percent in Q3 this year.

The volume of industrial consumption and output of electricity and freight traffic has seen rapid growth since the beginning of the third quarter of this year. The industrial sector has clearly tended to stabilize. The range of decline in Producer Price Index(PPI) has narrowed. In September the PPI ended its 54 months’ trend of declining and grew by 0.1%, which signifies the substantial changes of the demand and supply in industry sector.

In the first three quarters, the growth rate of the total imports and exports volume has increasingly stabilized quarter after quarter, and in third quarter returned to positive growth. Coping effectively with pressure of economic downturn and complex domestic and international situation, China maintain its strong support to the growth of world economy.
China’s Economy Grew Steadily with Progress.

Much headway has been made concerning the five major tasks, which are cutting industrial overcapacity, destocking, de-leveraging, lowering costs and improving weak links. In the first three quarters, the output of raw coal dropped by 10.5 percent year-on-year. At the end of August, the finished goods inventory of industrial enterprises above designated size dropped for five consecutive months.

At the end of September, the area of housing waiting for sale kept decreasing for seven consecutive months. The debt ratio and cost of industrial enterprises both dropped. Investment in ecology conservation and environmental protection, agriculture, forestry, water resource and infrastructures maintained a rapid growth. Meanwhile, the need structure continued to upgrade.

China’s Economy Grew Steadily with Quality. The added value of the service industry in the first three quarters accounts for 52.8 percent of GDP, up 1.6 percentage points compared to the same period last year. The Retail sales rose 9.8% compared to the earlier year, the online retail sales rose 26.1%.

The final consumption grew by 13.3% year on year, whose contribution rate to the GDP growth reached 71%, the investment to the high-tech industry and service industry grew steadily and the high energy-consumption industry decreased obviously. The energy consumption per unit of GDP was cut 5.2%. Strategic emerging industries, high-tech industries maintain 10% growth rate, which embodies the upgrading of China’s economy and acceleration of the increase of China’s new economy and growth drivers.

China’s Economy is Better than Expected. A total of 106.7 million new jobs were created in urban areas in the first three quarters of this year, equivalent to the target set for the whole year of 2016. According to a survey from September 2016, the unemployment rate in the urban areas of 31 big cities was lower than 5 percent for the first time since June 2013. The newly-registered enterprises per day reached 14.6 thousand, 2000 more than that of last year.

Non-governmental investment kept increasing, especially in central and western China, which inject new momentum to the development of China’s economy in the rest of this year.
The positive signal in the first 3 quarters has laid a solid foundation for the growth of the fourth quarter. China is expected to achieve the full-year growth target. Considering the sluggish world economy and the long-term accumulating domestic underlying problems, China has done very well to maintain a stable and quality growth.

It is worth noting that China did not rely on strong stimulus, but on reform and opening-up, innovations on macro-control style and accelerating the transition from old to new growth drivers to maintain one of the fastest growth economy among all major economies.

The greatest contribution China can make to the world economy is to guarantee its own economy a stable and sound development. As a senior researcher in Yale University predicted, 7.6% growth of China’s economy will lead to 1.2% growth of world economy, which contribute 39% of the world growth, much higher than that of USA, Europe and Japan combined. China is expected to be the new source of needs, and a strong boost to world economy.

China now is working hard to develop new growth drivers and upgrade its economic structure, which provides more opportunities and a huge market for all countries including Nigeria. In the coming five years, China’s import and export volume is supposed to reach 8 trillion USD, foreign investment 720 billion USD, outbound tourists more than 600 million, which offers huge business opportunities to the whole world.

Nigeria and China are strategic partners. We have relished the sweetness of the fruits from our mutually beneficial cooperation for many years. Under the backdrop of sluggish world economy, China is upgrading its economic structures while Nigeria is diversifying its economy. The highly complementary economies and development strategies of our two countries will ensure that our cooperation would achieve win-win results. We hope both China and Nigeria can seize this great opportunity, strengthen our existing cooperation and achieve common development together.

Chao Xiaoliang is Chinese Consul General.