China’s economy grew a record 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the same quarter last year, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. It’s the biggest jump in GDP since China started keeping quarterly records in 1992.
But the figure is heavily skewed as the surge in growth comes off a contraction in the first quarter of last year when the economy shrank tremendously during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Analysts say the GDP growth nevertheless suggests that China continues to gain economic momentum.
China’s economic importance is accelerating. At the same time, it is becoming more and more focused on building its domestic market, both in consumption and innovation.
Last year, China filed nearly 69,000 patents with the World Intellectual Property Organization, a rise of 16%.
The US had just above 59,000 applications, up three per cent, while in Germany, the number of patent applications actually fell 3.7 Percent to just over 18,600.
As the Chinese economy expands, industries like Germany’s auto sector are becoming increasingly dependent on China. 41 percent of Volkswagen sales volume comes from China, while China makes up about a third of BMW’s overall sales.
And Daimler sells 29 percent of its vehicles in China. The US remains Germany’s biggest trading partner. Last year, Germany sold 104 billion euros worth of goods and services there — that’s a 12.5 percent decline on 2019, largely because of the pandemic.
But China is not far behind. Germany exported goods worth nearly 96-billion euros to China last year, more or less unchanged from before the pandemic.
*Gateway China News Centre, keep you updated on China
※新西兰全搜索©️版权所有
敬请关注新西兰全搜索New Zealand Review 在各大社交媒体平台的公众号。从这里读懂新西兰！️
如果您喜欢我们的文章，请支持我们的新闻工作者和创作者！请打赏一杯咖啡给他们（注明栏目或文章题目），或支持我们每月的服务器费用，非常感谢！
订阅我们，Paypal每月赞助5纽币：
http://bit.ly/47fUCPS
