(VOVWORLD) - China's economy grew at the slowest pace in a year in the third quarter, hurt by power shortages, supply bottlenecks and sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks and raising heat on policymakers amid rising jitters over the property sector.
 An electronic display showing the China GDP indexes is seen on a street in Shanghai, China October 16, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Aly Song) |
Data released on Monday showed GDP grew 4.9% in July-September, the weakest pace since the third quarter of 2020 and slowing from 7.9% in the second quarter.
That marked a further deceleration from the 18.3% expansion in the first quarter, when the year-on-year growth rate was heavily flattered by the very low comparison seen during the COVID-induced slump of early 2020.
"The domestic economic recovery is still unstable and uneven," said National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) spokesperson Fu Linghui at a briefing in Beijing on Monday.
The world's second-largest economy has rebounded from the pandemic but the recovery is losing steam, weighed by faltering factory activity, persistently soft consumption and a slowing property sector as policy curbs bite.