BEIJING, Oct 20 (AFP): China's economic growth slipped below five per cent in the third quarter of 2025, the slowest pace in a year as trade headwinds and a domestic consumer slump continued to weigh.
The data comes as the country's ruling Communist Party kicks off a closely watched four-day meeting in Beijing focused on long-term economic planning.
It also comes ahead of in-person discussions later this month between top Chinese and US trade officials-as well as a potential meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
Trump earlier this month threatened blistering 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods from November 1, in response to Beijing's sweeping export controls in the strategic rare earths sector.
Gross domestic product in the July-September quarter expanded 4.8 per cent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, down from 5.2 per cent in the previous three months.
The figure was on par with an AFP forecast based on a survey of analysts.
It also represented the slowest growth since the same quarter last year, when GDP expanded 4.6 per cent.
As trade pressure builds, experts say China must adjust to a growth model driven more by domestic household spending than exports and manufacturing.
Fixed asset investment in the first three quarters saw a slight decline of 0.5 per cent year-on-year, the data showed, largely because of a sharp contraction in real estate investment.
That decline is "rare and alarming", Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note.
Zhang noted that recent stimulus measures "should help to mitigate the downward pressure on investment" in the fourth quarter.
"Nonetheless, the risk to GDP growth in Q4 is likely on the downside," he added.
Domestic spending has lagged in recent years, having failed to fully recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, which hammered consumer sentiment.
In a further sign of weakness, the NBS said retail sales growth slid to three per cent year-on-year in September, in line with estimates in a Bloomberg survey but down from August and the slowest rate since November.
"This slowdown reflects the waning impact of the consumer goods trade-in scheme, which had boosted sales of certain products earlier in the year," wrote Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics.
"China's growth is becoming increasingly dependent on exports, which are offsetting a slowdown in domestic demand," he wrote.
"This pattern of development is not sustainable," he added. In one bright spot, industrial production rose 6.5 per cent last month.
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