Gross domestic product grew by 6.5% in the fourth quarter from a year ago. Economists expected China to have been the only major economy to grow last year, and predicted GDP expanded by just over 2%. Covid-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. In an effort to control the virus, Chinese authorities shut down more than half the country, and the economy contracted by 6.8% in the first three months of 2020. However, China returned to growth by the second quarter. Economists polled by Reuters predicted GDP would increase 6.1% in the fourth quarter, faster than the 4.9% pace of the prior quarter. ... (full story)

China’s coronavirus-hit economy grew by 2.3 per cent in 2020, the lowest annual growth rate in 45 years, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday. The country is expected to be the only Group of 20 nation to report positive economic growth in 2020, even though the growth rate last year was the lowest since the nation’s economy shrank by 1.6 per cent in 1976. The growth rate was higher than the 2.1 per cent expansion projected in the median forecast in a survey of analysts by Bloomberg. In the fourth quarter of last year, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was 6.5 per cent from a year ... (full story)

Chinese economy in 2020 expanded 2.3 percent, the country’s statistics bureau said on Monday, boosted by a strong recovery in the second half after consumption, investment and export all gained pace. That made the country the only major economy in the world to eke out an expansion, while others, facing a voracious virus onslaught, contracted. China’s accelerating economic rebound, largely owing to the government’s drastic measures to contain the virus, will help boost the confidence of all other economies where a resurgence of infection cases is still taking tolls. However, the broader rollout of Covid-19 ... (full story)

AUD/USD trims intraday losses but fails to stay above 0.7700. China’s Q4 GDP, December Industrial Production improve but Retail Sales eases. Risk dwindles amid cautious sentiment ahead of new government in the US, virus woes. Off in America, light calendar elsewhere may challenge momentum traders. AUD/USD wavers around 0.7700 following mixed data releases from China during early Monday. The quote initially pierced the 0.7700 threshold while cheering upbeat GDP and Industrial Production data from the largest customer but couldn’t ignore weaker than expected Retail Sales. Also challenging the quote could be risk-off ... (full story)