NBS: China's overall economy to improve in 2023

China's economy will definitely improve overall in 2023, said Kang Yi, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, at a press conference Tuesday, Time Weekly reported.

The country registered a GDP growth in the fourth quarter in 2022 at 2.9 percent year-on-year and a yearly growth at 3.0 percent, both of which are better than market expectation, according to the bureau.

The bureau said, in the past year, effective coordination between epidemic prevention and control as well as economic and social development achieved positive results, stabilizing the macro-economic market, continuously expanding economic aggregate and steadily improving the quality of development.

Given significant adjustment in major policies such as pandemic prevention and control, and property and platform economy, it is expected that recovery will become the main keynote of the new year, and economic growth will converge to a reasonable growth range, said Wang Jun, chief economist at Huatai Asset Management.

The yearly GDP in 2023 growth is hopefully around 5 percent or a bit higher with lower growth in the early period of the year and higher in the later period.

The first quarter will record the lowest growth and a robust rebound will be seen in the second quarter at the earliest. Consumption and property will be two major drivers to fuel the growth, said Wang.

Wang deemed, with the improvement of residents' expectations on employment and income, some upgraded goods such as new energy vehicles, smart phones and green smart home appliances will become more popular among consumers, thus providing internal power for economic growth.

The sales and investment in the real estate market are also expecting slight rebounds at the low point. And investment growth will hopefully recover to -5 to 0 percent, which will be in favor of the economy, Wang added.

Consumption is the ballast stone of the economy, playing fundamental role in economic growth, especially in 2023 when the global economic recession holds a high probability and external demand further shrinks, said Wen Bin, chief economist at China Minsheng Banking Corp.

"Therefore, in order to restore consumption, it is necessary to increase the income of residents, especially the income of low- and middle-income residents who have a high propensity to consume but have been greatly affected by the pandemic. This is the fundamental way to restore and expand consumption.

Secondly, we need to improve consumption conditions, so that people are willing to spend, and we also need to strengthen the infrastructure and service capacity in new consumption areas, improve consumption measures and enhance the consumption convenience of people."

Academically, a GDP growth between 5-8 percent is considered an intermediate growth, above 8 percent is a high-speed growth, said Zeng Gang, head of the city development research institute of the East China Normal University.

In accordance with the local government work reports that have been released recently, eastern provinces and cities have a prudent outlook of their economic growth in 2023 based on the concern of external environment.

However, provinces and cities in Central and West China are more positive and full of confidence about the pulling effect of both building a unified ultra-large domestic market and investing in major capital projects, Zeng said.