A worker polishes bicycle components for export at a workshop of a foreign trade company in Lin’an district of Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, on July 15, 2026. Photo: VCG
China’s GDP expanded by 4.7 percent year-on-year to 69.57 trillion yuan ($10.28 trillion) in the first half of 2026, remaining well within the government’s annual growth target of 4.5 to 5 percent and showing resilience despite growing global economic uncertainties, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday.
In the second quarter alone, the economy expanded by 4.3 percent compared with the same period last year, easing from the 5.0 percent growth recorded in the first quarter.
Despite a slight moderation in the second quarter, the first-half figure demonstrates that the world’s second-largest economy continues to maintain a stable and positive growth momentum despite challenges that range from rising geopolitical tensions, oil price shocks and global trade frictions to uncertainties in the external environment, observers said.
They highlighted new growth drivers emerging from high-tech and green industries, which have been gaining strong traction as China accelerates its manufacturing upgrade, advances the creation of new quality productive forces, and the world embraces a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) investment.
Those new dynamics are expected to further unleash the endogenous potential of the Chinese economy for the remainder of the year, placing the country firmly on track to hit the annual growth target, while also laying a solid foundation for high-quality development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), analysts said. In an increasingly uncertain world, China’s economic development will continue to deliver significant opportunities to the global economy by alleviating global inflationary pressure and sharing the dividends of China’s technological progress and consumer market, observers noted.
“For a super-large economy like China, achieving a 4.7 percent year-on-year growth rate is no small feat… And China’s economy expanded by 3.6 trillion yuan in the first half compared with the same period last year, marking the largest growth for the same period in recent five years,” NBS deputy head Mao Shengyong said on the economic data at a press conference on Wednesday.
Mao stressed that despite the moderation in second-quarter growth, the fundamentals of China’s stable economic operation and the shift toward new, higher-quality development have not changed. He said that the slowdown in second-quarter growth was “mainly due to some short-term domestic factors and external influences.”
The Chinese official also placed China’s growth in the broader context of global economy, which he said “has seen new changes particularly since the second quarter.”
“Some international institutions expect major economies to see slower growth in the second quarter, with the US economy projected to slow to 2.1 percent from 2.7 percent in the first quarter, Japan to 0.2 percent from 0.4 percent, and the eurozone to grow by around 0.5 percent. The IMF recently cut its forecast for global economic growth this year to 3.0 percent from 3.5 percent last year, while raising its forecast for China’s full-year growth by 0.2 percentage points,” Mao said.
Yao Jingyuan, a special researcher at the Counselor’s Office of the State Council, told the Global Times on Wednesday that China’s GDP growth in the first half is “within expectations” as downward pressure on the economy has intensified.
“Some of the pressures stem from external shocks. For example, global oil prices have spiked over uncertainties in the Middle East, which has directly impacted relevant domestic industrial chains. The impact is not limited to China as countries worldwide have all been affected and are experiencing similar challenges,” Yao said. He noted that the imbalance between China’s supply and demand side persisted in the first half, further weighing on the economy.
According to the NBS data, China’s value-added industrial output of above-scale enterprises in the first six months rose 5.4 percent compared to the same period in 2025, while fixed-asset investment dropped by 5.7 percent year-on-year.
China’s total retail sales of consumer goods expanded by 2.7 percent year-on-year in the first half, according to the NBS data.
Observers believed that the detailed first-half economic data provides important indicators on China’s economic resilience and new growth momentum.
For example, value-added output of high-tech manufacturing jumped by 13.3 percent in the first six months, outpacing the national average of 5.4 percent, NBS data showed. Also, the output of China’s semiconductor industry rose 23.1 percent year-on-year in the first six months, which translates to an average of more than 1.5 billion chips produced per day.
In addition, the output of other smart products such as 5G smartphones, 3D printing equipment and service robots has maintained rapid growth. The daily token processing volume has reached the hundreds of trillions, marking a monumental leap and highlighting the vitality and potential of the digital and intelligent economy.
Hu Qimu, a professor at the Maritime Silk Road Institute of Huaqiao University, told the Global Times on Wednesday that “it is important to note that the economic figures show that the upgrading of our industrial structure, breakthroughs in homegrown tech innovation, and the optimization of our foreign trade structure are continuing to take strong effect, and that the medium- to long-term growth drivers are becoming increasingly evident,” Hu said.
Hu highlighted a number of new growth drivers from strategic emerging industries such as AI and the green sector, as well as strong vitality across the high-end manufacturing sector fueled by robust external demand and expanding trade and economic cooperation with Belt and Road partner countries.
Whole-year expectations
Observers believed that the solid first-half economic growth has set the tone for the country to achieve the full-year target of 4.5 to 5 percent, and stable growth momentum is expected in the second half of the year.
“China is on the right track to achieve its full-year target,” Yao said. He believed that further advances in technological innovation and high-end manufacturing will help the country better tap its endogenous growth potential and consolidate its high-quality development trajectory.
As more positive factors build in, policies to stabilize growth are coming to fruition, and despite some short-term fluctuation retreats, China’s GDP growth is likely to show a “V-shape” track throughout the year, bouncing back in the second half, Wang Qing, chief macroeconomic analyst at Golden Credit Rating International, said in a research note sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.
China has set a goal of raising total retail sales of consumer goods to around 60 trillion yuan ($8.8 trillion) by 2030 and further strengthening consumption’s role in driving economic growth, according to a government plan on expanding consumption during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) released on Monday.
Yao expects the plan to play a constructive role in propelling domestic consumption, which he said will remain “an important engine of the Chinese economy in the future.”
It is suggested that Chinese authorities could bring forward some infrastructure projects in the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) for early implementation. This would help generate strong investment demand and sustain economic momentum, analysts said.
“This year marks the beginning year of China’s 15th Five-Year plan, and we have a rich policy toolkit to stabilize development,” Wang noted.
Some foreign scholars noted that China’s first-half economic growth underscores the country’s substantial contribution to the global economy and the opportunities it brings, which stands in sharp contrast to the “China Shock 2.0” narrative peddled by some Western media that portrays the country’s rise in high-tech sectors as a new wave of disruption to the world economy.
“China’s consistent focus on innovation, the integration of AI into everyday life, high-quality development, green transformation and greater openness will continue to provide strong positive momentum for the global economy,” Khalid Taimur Akram, executive director of Pakistan Research Center for a Community with Shared Future, told the Global Times. He also stressed that China’s high-quality, competitively priced products have long been a key factor in making advanced technologies more accessible and easing the global inflationary pressure.
At a time when the global economy faces numerous uncertainties, China’s steadfast commitment to long-term development and international cooperation will continue to make a meaningful contribution to global economic stability and shared prosperity, he said.
