China’s economy grew by just 3 per cent in 2022, underscoring the heavy economic costs of the government’s longstanding zero-Covid strategy before it was abruptly abandoned last month.
The country’s gross domestic product figures missed Beijing’s official growth target, which at 5.5 per cent was already the lowest in decades. Other than in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, when full-year GDP expanded 2.2 per cent, growth was the weakest since 1976.
Although China’s economy is expected to recover this year as it reopens to the world, Tuesday’s data highlighted the scale of the challenge that President Xi Jinping faces after GDP growth was subordinated to a vast anti-pandemic policy apparatus for three years.
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