MNI POLICY: China May Grow More Than 5% In Q4: Advisors

China's GDP may grow at least 5% y/y in the last quarter, taking annual growth to around 2%, policy advisors said at the Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2020 on Thursday.

• "Q4 growth may continue to recover to around 6%," said Zhu Guangyao, a former vice minister of finance.
• Yao Jingyuan, a State Council advisor and former chief economist at the statistics bureau, has a more moderate estimate of over 5% growth for the quarter. Although China's economy grew 0.7% in the first three quarters, many indicators, especially in the industrial and services sectors, are still below normal levels, Yao said.
• "Currently, China is lacking effective demand and facing structural problems," he added.
• Consumption remains a drag on growth, with retail sales still falling 7.2% y/y for the first nine months and per capita spending declining 6.6%, Yao said.
• Though the unemployment rate recovered to 5.4% in September from a high of 6.2% reached earlier this year, 10 of the 31 provinces surveyed see the rate above 6%, said Yao. Among college graduates, the rate of unemployment is still as high as 19.9% as the services sector was hit hard by the pandemic, he added.