Published on 12.09.2012

China - Second-quarter provincial growth

As China's growth shifts into lower gear, the larger eastern provincial economies are bearing the brunt of the slowdown. Expansion in trade, investment and industrial production has slowed to—by national standards—a crawl. Inland provinces continue to outperform their coastal counterparts, much as they did in the aftermath of the 2008-09 downturn. Even though many western provinces are seeing a deceleration from their previously heady growth rates, they continue to maintain year-on-year GDP expansion of over 12%. They are also recording faster growth in disposable income and household consumption than the coastal provinces—a welcome development.

Although one might expect that the poorest would be most adversely affected in periods of economic difficulty, this has not been the case in China. In the second quarter of the year, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and Zhejiang—the country's political, financial and entrepreneurial capitals—continued to record the slowest GDP growth rates in the country at under 8% year on year, after falling below this threshold in the first quarter.

Full article at EIU.com