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China posts rapid GDP growth
BEIJING, China -- China's gross domestic product rose 9.1 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, official figures show. The State Statistical Bureau said in a statement Friday that GDP in the world's sixth-biggest economy rose an annual 8.5 percent in the first nine months. The bureau's deputy director, Qiu Xiaohua, told a press conference that GDP for the first three quarters totaled more than 7.9 trillion yuan ($956.6 billion), the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The figures confirm China's status as among the fastest-growing economies in the world, but also raise concerns about overheating and the need to cool the red-hot property sector. Exports are leading the charge as overseas investment pours into Chinese factories. Reuters news agency reported China's factory output surged 16.3 percent in September from a year earlier, driven by industries such as automobiles, metals, computers and machinery.
The investment surge, growing export revenues and speculators betting that China will allow its currency to appreciate in coming months have led to a dramatic rise in the country's foreign exchange reserves, Reuters said. At the end of August these reserves stood at $364.7 billion, second only to Japan's. HSBC China economist Qu Hongbin told CNN Friday that there was concern about the property "rush", particularly in the over-development of industrial parks around China. He said the number of parks was "quite alarming" and was adding to the overheating of the economy. Qu said China was aware it had many problems to deal with. In response to the overheating concerns, he said there was likely to be a slowdown in inward investment and this would flow through to a slowing of the GDP growth rate over time. Figures released earlier show inward investment in September was $3.6 billion -- a 30 percent drop from a year earlier. But contracted investment, an indicator of future trends, was up 36 percent in the first nine months to $79 billion. Overseas investment slowed sharply in the wake of the SARS outbreak earlier this year, but has picked up again as companies seek to tap a China's pool of cheap labor and its big potential market. Friday's statistics show China's consumer price index was up an annual 0.7 percent in the first nine months. The CPI covers a basket of goods from grain to rents. Fixed asset investment, which includes government spending on things like roads and power plants, was up 30.5 percent year on year in the January to September period, Reuters reported. Retail sales continued their rebound from the SARS outbreak, rising 8.6 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier. To head off damaging bubbles in some sectors, the Chinese authorities have moved to curb lending and on the buying and building of luxury property. They have also said they will ease back spending on infrastructure.
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