The Comment on the Economic Performance in 2020Q1

ABSTRACT

China's economy was hit seriously amid the outbreak of COVID-19 and there arises some doubts about the official GDP growth data. This paper interprets China's GDP growth data in the first quarter of 2020 from the perspective of demand and supply, and explains the relationship between the national GDP and the regional GDP. The research shows that from the demand side, stabilized growth in household's virtual consumption expenditure and the softer decline in government public service consumption expenditure helped to offset the drop of total consumption to some extent;the relatively stable intangible fixed capital formation and the dramatic increase of inventory change counterbalanced the fall in investment demand. The obviously narrowed service trade deficit eased the contraction in net export demand. From the supply side, the emerging services, owner-occupied dwelling service, indirectly measured financial intermediate service and insurance service kept growing, and the public services maintained relatively stable, which to some extent relieved the negative impact from the pandemic on service sector. Meanwhile, the correlation between the growth of electricity consumption and economic growth has been weakened amid the pandemic. In the first quarter, the linkage between the regional and national economic growth was further improved. The economic performance varied across regions given their diversified industrial structure and the pandemic's different impact on different sectors. © 2020, Tsinghua University Press. All rights reserved.