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China’s economy grew 0.4% from a year earlier in the second quarter, reflecting the toll Beijing’s stringent COVID-19 lockdowns have taken on economic activity.
The result undershot the 0.9% expansion expected by economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
The Chinese economy contracted 2.6% in the April to June period when compared with the first quarter, according to data released Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics. It marked the first quarter-on-quarter contraction since the first quarter of 2020, when the Chinese economy was ground to a halt by the initial COVID-19 outbreaks. Then, China’s gross domestic product shrank 10.3% from a quarter earlier.
Friday’s numbers also put China’s official economic-growth target of around 5.5% this year increasingly out of reach. In the first half of the year, China’s GDP grew 2.5% from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said.
