China’s economy grew by just 3% in 2022, underscoring the heavy costs of the government’s longstanding zero-COVID strategy before it was abruptly abandoned last month, reports the Financial Times.
The country’s gross domestic product figures missed Beijing’s official growth target, which at 5.5% was already the lowest in decades. Other than in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, when full-year GDP expanded 2.2%, growth was the weakest since 1976.
Although China’s economy is expected to recover in 2023 as the country reopens to the world, Tuesday’s data highlighted the scale of the challenge leader Xi Jinping faces after three years in which far-reaching COVID controls took precedence over growth.