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...country for which exports are a critical part of its economic lifeblood. The government responded by announcing a $585 billion spending package, driven by massive infrastructure investments across the country, and, for now anyway, that policy is paying off. China announced today that its GDP in the second quarter grew at 7.9%, just a shade below the 8.1% goal the government set for growth in 2009. "The strong acceleration in underlying economic activity is now unmistakable," says Yu Song, a Goldman Sachs economist based in Hong Kong...
...That acceleration - GPD growth was just 6.1% in the first quarter - is unmistakably good news for China's major trading partners, particularly those countries in Asia that export raw materials to China's manufacturers. Imports of semifinished industrial metals in the quarter soared by more than 35%, as China's stimulus-driven infrastructure build-out gathered steam. Overall fixed-asset investment picked up 33.5% year over year, a pace that recalled the country's glory years of double-digit economic expansion. (See pictures of life on the fringes of the People's Republic...
...turn have been building everything from high-speed rail networks to new highways and bridges across China. But economists were quick to note that other sectors of the economy besides construction now seem to be joining the party. In particular, property investment rose by nearly 18% in the quarter, well above what many economists had expected...
...analysts still skeptical of China's recovery story, major questions hung over the announcement today. One concerns long-standing doubts about the reliability of government economic data - what one U.S. hedge-fund manager calls "the Beijing fudge factor." In the first quarter of this year, Beijing reported 6.1% GDP growth, but electricity consumption overall in the country appeared to decline. How a country the size of China could grow by 6% yet use less electricity was puzzling. And in the first six months of this year, overall rail-freight traffic declined in China. Again, how that squares with accelerating growth...
...today's report also offered some reassurance that perhaps the fudge factor isn't that big an issue. Electricity generation snapped back sharply in the second quarter, statistics show. Some analysts believe the drop late last year and early in 2009 was consistent with an economy in which heavy users of power, such as steel and aluminum factories, were slashing production is response to weakened global demand. Now, China's aggressive government spending has refired the furnaces...