In the report accompanying the 2017 results, drawn up by the Beijing Institute, it is highlighted that "The national economy has maintained its momentum and solid and stable development".
In 2017, real estate investments grew by 7%, slightly down one decimal compared to the 2016 figure, while fixed investments grew by 7,2% in 2017, with a decrease of 0,3% compared to the figure for the first nine months last year and almost one percentage point (-0,9%) compared to the 2016 figure.
Some doubts about the results proposed by the Bureau of Statistics are however moved by some analysts who consider them unreliable due to the inflated data scandals coming from various provinces, in particular those of the north-east, which for years have been growing at a lower rate than the national one.
A recent analysis carried out by the Financial Times takes into consideration the years from 2012 to 2016, during which it emerges that many northern areas of the country have inflated the data, in the case of Inner Mongolia, by as much as 40%. A similar story is that of the province of Liaoning, which admitted to having falsified the data for years, without having issued a revision of the same. The list also includes the port city of Tianjin, on the outskirts of Beijing, and the Shanxi province, heavily dependent on coal, which together with steel has been at the center of government intervention to contain industrial overproduction.
Probably precisely to try to revive the economy of the most difficult areas of China, id, the Chinese online retail giant, today announced investments of over three billion dollars (twenty billion yuan) in the Chinese "rust belt" (or the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang) for industrial modernization and the creation of thousands of jobs that could restart the economy locally.
Despite the turnaround in 2017, for the year that has just begun, forecasts still indicate a slowdown for the Chinese economy, and growth, according to initial estimates, should be around 6,4%.
According to initial advances, despite the result being above expectations, the growth target for 2018 should remain unchanged, at around 6,5%. Government priorities: contain system risks (on which the Chinese president, Xi Jinping has been insisting for some time), starting with the high level of debt, around 260% of gross domestic product, and which could reach 327% in 2022, according to Bloomberg projections. The International Monetary Fund, last December, had instead issued a warning to China, whose economy could be subject to "serious risks" of the system.