According to preliminary figures, the growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) in China amounted to 5.0 percent in 2024. For 2025, the IMF expects a GDP growth rate of around 4.8 percent. Real GDP growth The current gross domestic product is an important indicator of the economic strength of a country. It refers to the total market value of all goods and services that are produced within a country per year. When analyzing year-on-year changes, the current GDP is adjusted for inflation, thus making it constant. Real GDP growth is regarded as a key indicator for economic growth as it incorporates constant GDP figures. As of 2024, China was among the leading countries with the largest gross domestic product worldwide, second only to the United States which had a GDP volume of almost 29.2 trillion U.S. dollars. The Chinese GDP has shown remarkable growth over the past years. Upon closer examination of the distribution of GDP across economic sectors, a gradual shift from an economy heavily based on industrial production towards an economy focused on services becomes visible, with the service industry outpacing the manufacturing sector in terms of GDP contribution. Key indicator balance of trade Another important indicator for economic assessment is the balance of trade, which measures the relationship between imports and exports of a nation. As an economy heavily reliant on manufacturing and industrial production, China has reached a trade surplus over the last decade, with a total trade balance of around 992 billion U.S. dollars in 2024.

According to a median projection in October 2025, China's GDP was expected to grow by *** percent in 2025. In the first quarter of 2020, the second-largest economy recorded the first contraction in decades due to the epidemic.  A root-to-branch shutdown of factories To curb the spread of the virus, the Chinese government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, the epicenter, and other cities in Hubei province on January 23, 2020. A strict nationwide lockdown soon followed. Many factories remained closed in February, resulting in a plunge in manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI). The shutdown of the “world’s factory” had severely disrupted global supply chains, especially automobile production. In March 2020, very few industrial sectors reported positive production growth.  The pharmaceuticals sector recorded a production increase, which was mainly driven by the global demand for vital medical supplies. China had exported over seven billion yuan worth of face masks. Ripple effects on global tourism Apart from the manufacturing industry, the prolonged closures of business had caused significant losses in various sectors in China. The travel and tourism sector was massively affected by a drastic decline in flight ticket sales  and hotel occupancy rates. The domestic tourism market expects a loss of 20 percent in revenues for 2020. Industry experts predicted that the global travel and tourism industry could lose about *** trillion U.S. dollars in that year. 

Graph and download economic data for Balance of Payments: Total Net Current Account for China, P.R.: Mainland (CHNBCAGDPBP6PT) from 1997 to 2029 about current account, BOP, China, and Net.

In 2024, the gross domestic product (GDP) of China amounted to around 18.7 trillion U.S. dollars. In comparison to the GDP of the other BRIC countries India, Russia and Brazil, China came first that year and second in the world GDP ranking. The stagnation of China's GDP in U.S. dollar terms in 2022 and 2023 was mainly due to the appreciation of the U.S. dollar. China's real GDP growth was 5.4 percent in 2023 and 5.0 percent in 2024. In 2024, per capita GDP in China reached around 13,300 U.S. dollars. Economic performance in China Gross domestic product (GDP) is a primary economic indicator. It measures the total value of all goods and services produced in an economy over a certain time period. China's economy used to grow quickly in the past, but the growth rate of China’s real GDP gradually slowed down in recent years, and year-on-year GDP growth is forecasted to range at only around four percent in the years after 2024. Since 2010, China has been the world’s second-largest economy, surpassing Japan.China’s emergence in the world’s economy has a lot to do with its status as the ‘world’s factory’. Since 2013, China is the largest export country in the world. Some argue that it is partly due to the undervalued Chinese currency. The Big Mac Index, a simplified and informal way to measure the purchasing power parity between different currencies, indicates that the Chinese currency yuan was roughly undervalued by 38 percent in 2024. GDP development Although the impressive economic development in China has led millions of people out of poverty, China is still not in the league of industrialized countries on the per capita basis. To name one example, the U.S. per capita economic output was more than six times as large as in China in 2024. Meanwhile, the Chinese society faces increased income disparities. The Gini coefficient of China, a widely used indicator of economic inequality, has been larger than 0.45 over the last decade, whereas 0.40 is the warning level for social unrest.

China: Trade openness: exports plus imports as percent of GDP: The latest value from 2024 is 37.2 percent, an increase from 36.11 percent in 2023. In comparison, the world average is 92.80 percent, based on data from 133 countries. Historically, the average for China from 1960 to 2024 is 27.87 percent. The minimum value, 4.83 percent, was reached in 1970 while the maximum of 63.57 percent was recorded in 2006.

China recorded a Current Account surplus of 2.20 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2024. This dataset provides - China Current Account to GDP - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

ABSTRACT This paper reports homogenous series of the rate of surplus value for the Chinese economy over the period 1956-2015 with a Marxian approach. It finds that the rate of surplus value reached the historical peak of the whole period in 2008 and that the high profitability in the decade before the 2008 crisis had relied on the continuous growth in the rate of surplus value. It provides a time series analysis to show that the rising wage pressure and value composition of capitalhas restrained profitability since 2008. Thus, this paper interprets the so-called “new normal” of the Chinese economy as a stage of declining profitability that results mainly from the stagnant rate of surplus value and the rising value composition of capital.

We analyze China’s interindustry connections and show that China’s housing activity has become increasingly important to its GDP growth. Our results suggest that a 10 percent decline in final demand for real estate and housing-related construction would lead to a decline in total output of 2.2 percent, an effect more than two times larger than it would have been 10 years ago.

Factor price distortions and resource misallocation are important sources of productivity differences between regions. Promoting the free flow of factors of production is conducive to giving full play to the decisive role of the market in allocating resources, which is crucial to helping a country’s economy develop in a high-quality and sustainable manner. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring factor market distortions and establishes the relationship between factor price distortions and a country’s economic growth. This paper examines the resource misallocation and efficiency loss of 31 provinces in China from 2004 to 2020, and proposes an analytical framework for resource misallocation among regions, with which the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and the factor price distortion of provinces in China are calculated. The calculation results indicate that the TFP of China’s provinces gradually declines from the eastern coast to the western inland. The resource allocation efficiency in the eastern and central areas is higher than that in the western areas, so is the factor price, and its distortion causes nearly 6% of loss of output value in China. China’s economic growth is still reliant on the increase of factor input and technological development and the improvement of resource allocation efficiency has no significant effect on growth.

In 2024, the employment rate in China decreased to around 62.4 percent, from 62.8 percent in the previous year. China is the world’s most populous country and its rapid economic development over the past decades has profited greatly from its large labor market. While the overall working conditions for the Chinese people are improving, the actual size of the working-age population in China has been shrinking steadily in recent years. This is mainly due to a low birth rate in the country. Economic slowdown – impact on labor market After decades of rapid development, the world’s second largest economy now seems to have difficulties to boost its economy further. The GDP growth rate indicated a declining trend over the last decade and the number of employed people decreased for the first time since decades in 2015. Under the influence of the global economic downturn, the coronavirus pandemic, and the US-China tensions, many Chinese enterprises are having tough times, which leads to a recession in China’s labor market. Chances for better employment situation The long-lasting Sino-U.S. trade war has caused China great loss on its international trade sector, which has been driving China’s economic growth for decades. However, there is also a lot China could improve. First, the potential of domestic demands could be further developed and satisfied with high-quality products. Second, it’s a good timing to eliminate backward industries with low value added, and the high-tech and environment-friendly industries should be further promoted. In addition, China’s market could be more open to services, especially in the financial sector and IT services, to attract more foreign investors. Highly skilled talents should be better valued in the labor market. Efficient vocational education and further education could also help change the structure of China’s labor market.

Replication material for the paper "The Decline of Age-Friendly Jobs in China: Evidence from Online Job Vacancies" submitted to Economic Modelling

China’s export benefits from the significant fiscal stimulus in the United States. This paper analyzes the global spillover effect of the American economy on China’s macro-economy using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-Gibbs sampling approach, with the goal of improving the ability of China’s financial system to protect against foreign threats. This paper examines the theories of the consequences of uncertainty on macroeconomics first. Then, using medium-sized economic and financial data, the uncertainty index of the American and Chinese economies is built. In order to complete the test and analysis of the dynamic relationship between American economic uncertainty and China’s macro-economy, a Time Varying Parameter-Stochastic Volatility-Vector Autoregression (TVP- VAR) model with random volatility is constructed. The model is estimated using the Gibbs sampling method based on MCMC. For the empirical analysis, samples of China’s and the United States’ economic data from January 2001 to January 2022 were taken from the WIND database and the FRED database, respectively. The data reveal that there are typically fewer than 5 erroneous components in the most estimated parameters of the MCMC model, which suggests that the model’s sampling results are good. China’s pricing level reacted to the consequences of the unpredictability of the American economy by steadily declining, reaching its lowest point during the financial crisis in 2009, and then gradually diminishing. After 2012, the greatest probability density range of 68% is extremely wide and contains 0, indicating that the impact of economic uncertainty in the United States on China’s pricing level is no longer significant. China should therefore focus on creating a community of destiny by working with nations that have economic cooperation to lower systemic financial risks and guarantee the stability of the capital market.

This statistic shows the forecasted declines in the Chinese economy and employment affected by the U.S. **% tariffs on commodities imported from China in 2018, by category. It was estimated that if the Unites States imposed ** percent taxes on products of Chinese origin, the exports from China to the U.S. would decline by ** percent.

The data and programs replicate tables and figures from "China's Declining Business Dynamism", by Cerdeiro and Ruane. Please see the ReadMe file for additional details.

Factor price distortions and resource misallocation are important sources of productivity differences between regions. Promoting the free flow of factors of production is conducive to giving full play to the decisive role of the market in allocating resources, which is crucial to helping a country’s economy develop in a high-quality and sustainable manner. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring factor market distortions and establishes the relationship between factor price distortions and a country’s economic growth. This paper examines the resource misallocation and efficiency loss of 31 provinces in China from 2004 to 2020, and proposes an analytical framework for resource misallocation among regions, with which the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and the factor price distortion of provinces in China are calculated. The calculation results indicate that the TFP of China’s provinces gradually declines from the eastern coast to the western inland. The resource allocation efficiency in the eastern and central areas is higher than that in the western areas, so is the factor price, and its distortion causes nearly 6% of loss of output value in China. China’s economic growth is still reliant on the increase of factor input and technological development and the improvement of resource allocation efficiency has no significant effect on growth.

Moderate rising of house prices are beneficial to the economic development. However, over high house prices worsen the economic distortions and thus hinder the development of the real economy. We use the stochastic frontier models to calculate the fundamental value in the housing in Chinese large and medium cities, and then obtain indexes which could measure the house prices’ deviations from the fundamental value. With the macroeconomic data in the city-level, this paper empirically investigates the effects of the house prices’ deviations on macro-economic variables like consumption, investment and output. The study reveals that the housing bubble exists in most Chinese cities, and first-tier cities fare the worst. House prices over the fundamental value, which could increase the scale of real estate investment, bring adverse impacts on GDP, as it causes declining civilian consumption and discourages real economy’s investment and production. The encouragement and the discouragement on macroeconomy caused by house prices’ deviation from its basic value take turns to play a key role in the process of China’ eco-nomic growth. In the early stage of China’s economic growth, the encouragement effect predominates. As urbanization and industrialization gradually upgrade to a higher level, the discouragement effect takes charge.

In 2023, China's labor force amounted to approximately 772.2 million people. The labor force in China indicated a general decreasing trend in recent years. As both the size of the population in working age and the share of the population participating in the labor market are declining, this downward trend will most likely persist in the foreseeable future. A country’s labor force is defined as the total number of employable people and incorporates both the employed and the unemployed population. Population challenges for China One of the reasons for the shrinking labor force is the Chinese one-child policy, which had been in effect for nearly 40 years, until it was revoked in 2016. The controversial policy was intended to improve people’s living standards and optimize resource distribution through controlling the size of China’s expanding population. Nonetheless, the policy also led to negative impacts on the labor market, pension system and other societal aspects. Today, China is becoming an aging society. The increase of elderly people and the lack of young people will become a big challenge for China in this century. Employment in China Despite the slowing down of economic growth, China’s unemployment rate has sustained a relatively low rate. Complete production chains and a well-educated labor force make China’s labor market one of the most attractive in the world. Working conditions and salaries in China have also improved significantly over the past years. Due to China’s leading position in terms of talent in the technology industry, the country is now attracting investment from some of the world’s leading companies in the high-tech sector.

China's main stock market index, the SHANGHAI, fell to 3898 points on December 2, 2025, losing 0.42% from the previous session. Over the past month, the index has declined 1.98%, though it remains 15.36% higher than a year ago, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks this benchmark index from China. China Shanghai Composite Stock Market Index - values, historical data, forecasts and news - updated on December of 2025.

Foreign Direct Investment YoY in China decreased by 10.30 percent in October from -10.40 percent in September of 2025. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for China Foreign Direct Investment YoY.

Property Investment in China decreased to -14.70 percent in October from -13.90 percent in September of 2025. This dataset includes a chart with historical data for China Property Investment YoY.