China’s resilient economy has been injecting more positive energy into the global economic recovery in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, Cambodian experts have said.
The Chinese economy maintained its recovery trend in July with major economic indicators posting steady growths despite domestic COVID-19 outbreaks and heatwaves.
China’s value-added industrial output went up 3.8 percent year on year in July and 0.38 percent over June, data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) showed Monday.
The official data showed China’s retail sales of consumer goods climbed 2.7 percent year on year last month, with sales of consumption-upgrading goods like jewelry and household appliances expanding fast.
Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said China’s economy remains resilient despite the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising global inflation thanks to its effective anti-pandemic measures and pro-growth economic policies and measures.
“With a series of economic stimulus measures in effect, I foresee that China’s economy will continue to recover strongly in the second half of this year, boosted by the ongoing increases in industrial production and consumption as well as innovation,” he told Xinhua.
“The resilience of the Chinese economy is not only a great boon to China itself, but also to the rest of the world because China has become the stabilizer of global supply chains since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
Phea said the sustained and stable recovery of China’s economy has been giving impetus into the recovery of the global economy.
“China has been a locomotive of global growth for decades and there is no doubt that the world’s second largest economy will continue to be the important engine of global growth in decades to come,” he said.
China’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 2.5 percent in the first half of this year, and the country’s foreign trade of goods jumped 10.4 percent year on year to 23.6 trillion yuan (about 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars) during the January-July period this year, official data showed.
Joseph Matthews, a senior professor at the BELTEI International University in Phnom Penh, said China’s strong trade growth clearly reflected the recovering global trade and economy.
“The growth also proves that China has opened up its market wider for the world and has actively participated in international trade even during the pandemic,” he told Xinhua.
Matthews said China has been greatly contributing to the world’s economic development through the Belt and Road Initiative, Digital Silk Road, green economy, and blue economy, among others.
“The only way to bring back the global economy to the pre-pandemic level is to work together as one global economy and one global market,” he said.
Thong Mengdavid, a research fellow at the Phnom Penh-based Asian Vision Institute, said the strong growth of China’s exports has resulted from the swift recovery of China’s industries.
“China’s robust growth in exports has not only benefited China itself, but also contributed to promoting global development and prosperity,” he told Xinhua.
