China's economy grows 0.4% in June quarter, set to miss fiscal target

China’s economy grew at the slowest pace since the country was first hit by the coronavirus outbreak two years ago, making Beijing’s growth target for the year increasingly unattainable as economists downgrade their forecasts further.

The 0.4 per cent expansion in gross domestic product reported for the three months to June, when dozens of cities including Shanghai and Changchun imposed lockdowns, was the second weakest ever recorded. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. promptly cut its full-year growth forecast to 3.3 per cent, saying the figures suggest Covid lockdowns last quarter took a heavier-than-expected toll on the economy. 

The slowdown means Beijing will miss its GDP target of about 5.5 per cent by a wide margin this year, the first time that’s likely to happen. The government didn’t set a target in 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus outbreak, and only missed it slightly by 0.2 percentage point in 1998.
 

China’s outlook remains highly uncertain as President Xi Jinping stays committed to his Covid Zero approach of stamping out infections.

With China a major buyer of commodities from oil to coal to corn, the economy’s slowdown is a blow to a global economy already hit by recession fears. 

China's economy logged a 2.5 per cent YoY growth in the first half of 2022, official data showed on Friday. Making matters worse for the economy, data showed no sign of improvement in the slump in China’s property investment, which drives demand for goods and services worth about 20 per cent of China’s GDP.

Alibaba shares fall on probe report

Shares in Alibaba Group Holdings fell 5.7 per cent on Friday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese tech giant's cloud division has been summoned by Shanghai authorities in connection with a theft of police data.

An anonymous hacker had earlier this month claimed to have obtained personal information of more than 1 billion Chinese residents from the Shanghai police.

A dashboard for managing the database was left open on the internet for over a year without a password, which made it easy to access and retrieve its contents, the Wall Street Journal said, citing cybersecurity researchers. Bloomberg