Is the Chinese economy less attractive to the outside world? The economic data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on April 17 gave the person who holds this view a head start. According to preliminary accounting, the gross domestic product in the first quarter was 1,088.3 billion yuan, which was 6.9% higher than the same period of last year. The main indicators were better than expected and achieved a good start, laying a solid foundation for the completion of the expected development goals for the whole year.
Import and export grew rapidly and the structure of foreign trade improved. In the first quarter, the total volume of imports and exports was 6-11986 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.8% It is worth noting that the “Belt and Road Initiative” is playing an active role. China's import and export growth in some countries along the “Belt and Road” increased by 37%, 18.7%, 19%, 69.3% and 27.7% respectively in Russia, Pakistan, Poland, Kazakhstan and India.
The balance of payments improved. From the perspective of current accounts, the trade surplus of goods in the first quarter exceeded 450 billion yuan. From the perspective of capital projects, the flow of cross-border capital has also undergone positive changes, and the RMB exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves have been generally stable. At the end of March, China’s foreign exchange reserves stood at $30,090.88 billion, an increase of $3.964 billion from the previous month, which was a two-month recovery. The basis for the stability of the RMB exchange rate is even stronger.
Prices are generally stable. In the first quarter, the national consumer price (CPI) rose by 1.4% year-on-year. It should be said that the speed of such price increases is hard to come by. In 2016, CPI rose by 2.0% year-on-year. In January 2017, the CPI rose by 2.5% year-on-year, but the CPI in February and March fell below 1% year-on-year, at 0.8% and 0.9% respectively.
The national industrial producer price (PPI) is positive, which is good news for the recovery of industrial enterprises' profits. In September 2016, the PPI rose by 0.1% year-on-year, and it has turned from negative to positive for the first time since March 2012. Since then, PPI has maintained positive growth, and the year-on-year rate of increase has generally accelerated. The PPI for October-December 2016 increased by 1.2%, 3.3%, and 5.5%, respectively. In the first quarter of 2017, the PPI rose by 7.4% year-on-year and continued to rise. From January to March, the PPI rose by 6.9%, 7.8% and 7.6% respectively.
The industrial growth rate has obviously accelerated, and corporate profits have grown rapidly. In the first quarter, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 6.8% year-on-year, and the growth rate accelerated by 1.0 percentage point over the same period of the previous year, 0.8 percentage points higher than the previous year. In January-February, the total profits of industrial enterprises above designated size reached 101.57 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.5%, an increase of 23.0 percentage points over the previous year.
Private investment continued to pick up. In the first quarter, the growth rate of private investment accelerated by 1 percentage point from January to February, an increase of 7.7%; manufacturing investment increased by 5.8% in the first quarter, 1.5 percentage points faster than that in January and February. Private investment and manufacturing investment reflect the market's endogenous power and market vitality. The acceleration of these two growth rates means that China's economic vitality is improving. To say that China’s external attractiveness has declined, how can it be said?
