BEIJING: China’s economy grew by five per cent last year to USD 20.01 trillion, riding high on the robust exports despite US tariffs while domestic consumption, its bugbear, remained sluggish.
China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5 per cent year on year in 2025, meeting the annual target of around 5 per cent, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday.
The GDP hit a record of 140.1879 trillion yuan which amounted to USD 20.01 trillion, surpassing the 20 trillion mark for the first time, according to the NBS data.
The growth, however, slowed to a three-year low of 4.5 per cent in the final quarter dragged down by a series of domestic headwinds.
It was the slowest quarterly growth China had recorded since the final quarter of 2022, when it grew only 3 per cent as it was still affected by the COVID-19 crisis.
Quarter on quarter, China’s economy expanded by 1.2 per cent in the last three months of 2025.
Despite a complex domestic and external environment, the economy advanced under pressure, achieving fresh progress in high-quality development, the NBS said.
The main goals and tasks for economic and social development were fully achieved in 2025, bringing the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) to a successful conclusion, it said, sounding hopeful of a better start for the 15th Five-Year Plan starting this year.
China managed to achieve the five per cent GDP growth rate mainly due to record goods export trade surplus of USD 1.19 trillion last year shrugging off the impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs onslaught and decline in shipments to the US due to the rapid growth of other markets.
Observers say the growth, however, remained skewed as China's economy continued to be dependent on export growth while its internal demand remained sluggish coupled with downturn in the property market despite efforts by the ruling Communist Party of China, (CPC) headed by President Xi Jinping to boost domestic consumption.
According to the NBS data, the country's per capita disposable income stood at 43,377 yuan (about USD 6,192), up by 5 per cent year on year in nominal terms.
The data said that the job market has remained generally stable, with the surveyed urban unemployment rate holding steady at 5.2 per cent in 2025, while the unofficial estimates put the unemployment figure around 20 per cent.
China's value-added industrial output expanded 5.9 per cent year on year in 2025, official data showed on Monday.
Commenting on China’s GDP data, Kang Yi, commissioner of the statistics bureau, said China’s economy had withstood multiple pressures to maintain steady growth in 2025, but cautioned that external pressures were intensifying and many “long-standing problems and new challenges” were affecting economic development.
Official data showed that China’s economy became more dependent on exports last year, with net exports accounting for 32.7 per cent of growth – the highest proportion recorded since 1997.
According to the NBS, China's retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country's consumption strength, climbed 3.7 per cent year on year in 2025.
The consumption contributed 52 per cent of growth, while 15.3 per cent came from investment.
Property investment shrank by 17.2 per cent year on year in 2025, continuing years-long decline since the property prices crash that has weighed on overall growth.
Private sector investment also fell by 6.4 per cent last year, while manufacturing investment edged up 0.6 per cent, according to the bureau.
Sarah Tan, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that China’s growth had “become increasingly lopsided, propped up by exports while households hang back amid fragile domestic demand”.
Analysts from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s China team echoed that view, while noting that “the services sector is a bright spot for the economy, underpinned by strong artificial intelligence and tech investments and robust financial market activities”.
Retail sales, a major barometer of consumption, grew by 3.7 per cent in 2025, missing the 4.1 per cent forecast.
Huang Zichun, China economist with Capital Economics, said the slowdown in retail sales partly reflected the “waning impact” of Beijing’s trade-in programme for consumer goods , which was introduced to boost purchases of home appliances, cars and other products.
Ding Shuang, chief economist for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Chartered, told the Post that despite China meeting its GDP target – with the services sector contributing more than expected – the slowdown in investment and consumption warranted caution.
China’s urbanisation rate – the share of the population living in cities – reached 67.89 per cent in 2025, up 0.89 percentage points from the end of the previous year, NBS data said.
Analysts say market attention now turns to how the Chinese authorities will bolster domestic demand, a top policy priority outlined by Beijing at the tone-setting central economic work conference in December.
China is likely to set a growth target of between 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent for 2026, analysts from Standard Chartered said in a note last week.
“China appears to be refocusing on longer-term transformation to foster self-sustained growth. Policies are likely to be marginally less expansionary in 2026,” the Post quoted analysts.