Despite a fraught geopolitical environment and a US-led trade war in 2025, China achieved its growth target of 5 percent, with gross domestic product reaching 140.19 trillion yuan ($20.4 trillion). The contributions to last year’s GDP growth from the three components of aggregate demand — final consumption, capital formation and net exports — were 52 percent, 15.3 percent and 32.7 percent, respectively. Despite the impressive overall growth performance for 2025, the structure of aggregate demand was problematic.

Despite a fraught geopolitical environment and a US-led trade war in 2025, China achieved its growth target of 5 percent, with gross domestic product reaching 140.19 trillion yuan…

Beijing tamped down its GDP growth target this year to a range of 4.5% to 5%, the least ambitious goal on record going back to the early 1990s.