The Asian giant has followed for nearly three years a strict health policy called "zero Covid", which has allowed the population to be largely protected from Covid-19.

These draconian measures, which were based on confinements as soon as positive cases were discovered, travel restrictions and generalized screening tests, have seriously disrupted production and supply chains.

Many factories and businesses had to close overnight for a handful of Covid-19 cases, while the Chinese limited their outings and their leisure activities to avoid finding themselves in contact.

These measures were finally lifted in early December.

But the decision has led to an exponential increase in the number of Covid patients, which is a major obstacle to recovery.

If the peak of contaminations has been reached, “uncertainty remains concerning a future wave or new variants”, underlines economist Wang Tao, of the bank UBS.

In this context, China saw its gross domestic product grow by 3% in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics (BNS) announced on Tuesday.

This pace, which would be the envy of most major economies, is still one of the lowest in 40 years for the Asian giant.

A group of economists polled by AFP anticipated a more pronounced slowdown (+2.7%).

Goal missed

Beijing had set itself a target of 5.5%, a rate already much lower than the performance of 2021, when China's GDP had grown by more than 8%, driven by the recovery after the first epidemic wave.

Last year, China's growth was the weakest since the contraction of 1976 (-1.6%) and the slowdown of 2020, the first year of the pandemic (+2.3%).

In the fourth quarter, Chinese growth slowed over one year (+2.9%), compared to 3.9% in the previous quarter.

From one quarter to another, a more faithful criterion of comparison for the economy, the pace is stable (+3.9%).

In 2022, the economy "faced storms and rough waters" globally, SNB official Kang Yi told reporters.

In December, retail sales, the main indicator of household spending, were thus down again (-1.8% over one year), after a plunge already in November (-5.9%).

For its part, industrial production fell last month (+1.3% over one year), after rising 2.2% in November.

The population of China, the most populous country in the world, also fell in 2022, a historic first since the early 1960s.

In total, 9.56 million births were registered last year, and did not compensate for the 10.41 million deaths, announced the BNS.

"Shining Economy"

For its part, the unemployment rate fell slightly in December (5.5%), against 5.7% a month earlier.

However, this figure paints an incomplete picture of the economic situation, since it is only calculated for urban dwellers.

It effectively excludes the millions of migrant workers, who are particularly vulnerable to the economic downturn.

Their situation has been exacerbated by a crisis in real estate, a sector which, along with construction, represents more than a quarter of China's GDP and is a major pool of low-skilled jobs.

Real estate has suffered since 2020 from a tightening by Beijing of the conditions of access to credit for real estate developers, in order to reduce their indebtedness.

To revive an essential sector of the economy, the government seems to have adopted a more conciliatory approach in recent weeks.

In particular, credit support measures for certain promoters have been announced.

Eminently political and subject to caution, China's official GDP figure is nevertheless highly scrutinized, given the country's weight in the global economy.

"We must vigorously [...] sing the song of a brilliant Chinese economy," ordered the czar of propaganda and ideology, Cai Qi, quoted earlier this month by the New China agency.

In short: “do not expect bad news”, according to analysts from the firm Trivium, which specializes in economics and politics.

This year, China should see its GDP grow by 4.3%, according to forecasts by the World Bank, however revised downwards last month.

© 2023 AFP