Guangdong province – traditionally a reliable driver of China’s economic growth – has continued to lag behind the national average in gross domestic product terms, a gap that has widened further thanks to an unresolved crisis in the property market and divergent performance from its cities.
This was a wider gap than the 1.1 percentage point deficit observed in the first six months, when the province recorded 3.9 per cent growth against the country’s 5 per cent.
Retail sales also saw paltry growth at 0.7 per cent, down from the 1.2 per cent observed in the first half of the year.
“Guangdong’s underperformance is showing the negative impact of the real estate crisis,” said Guo Wanda, vice-president of the Shenzhen-based China Development Institute think tank.
“Tech-oriented Shenzhen is doing fine, but cities that are more reliant on the upstream and downstream of real estate and traditional manufacturing like Guangzhou and Foshan are slowing.”