A cargo ship carrying foreign trade containers docks with the assistance of tugboats at Qingdao Port, East China's Shandong Province, on October 20, 2025. Official data showed on Monday that China's GDP grew 5.2 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025, exceeding 101.5 trillion yuan ($14.3 trillion). Photo: VCG

China's GDP grew 5.2 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025, exceeding 101.5 trillion yuan ($14.3 trillion), according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), showing that the country's economy has withstood pressure and achieved commendable development results, maintaining an overall stable and progressing development trend. 

An NBS spokesperson said on Monday that there are still many favorable conditions for achieving the full-year targets, noting that the steady economic growth rate in the first three quarters has laid a solid foundation for meeting annual goals, the accelerated development of new quality productive forces has added fresh momentum to high-quality development, and the sustained effectiveness of macro policies will continue to safeguard the nation's stable economic performance.

In the first nine months, China's value-added industrial output increased by 6.2 percent year-on-year, the NBS data showed. The value-added output of the equipment manufacturing industry grew by 9.7 percent, and that of the high-tech manufacturing sector rose by 9.6 percent, surpassing the overall growth of industrial enterprises above the designated size by 3.5 and 3.4 percentage points, respectively.

In the first nine months, retail sales hit 36.5877 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.5 percent. Final consumption expenditure contributed 53.5 percent to economic growth, an increase of 9.0 percentage points compared with the full-year figure in the previous year, continuing to serve as the main engine of economic growth, the NBS spokesperson said.

In the third quarter, GDP expanded 4.8 percent year-on-year, the official data showed. The NBS spokesperson said that this was primarily the result of a complex and challenging external environment combined with significant domestic structural adjustment pressures. Despite a slight slowdown in economic growth, the trend of stable and progressive development remains unchanged. China's economy has always grown stronger through overcoming challenges, the spokesperson noted. 

The NBS spokesperson also said that in the first three quarters, China's GDP grew by 5.2 percent year-on-year, up 0.2 percentage points from the full-year growth of the previous year and 0.4 percentage points from the same period last year. The economic increment reached 39.679 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.368 trillion yuan compared with the previous year. 

"For an economy of China's massive scale, maintaining stable growth is no small feat, especially against the backdrop of intertwined risks and challenges, making this achievement all the more remarkable," the spokesperson noted.

"The economic performance in the January-September period was highlighted by high-tech manufacturing, which is in line with the country's policy to promote new quality productive forces and will continue to be a new growth engine to stimulate the vitality of independent innovation," Hu Qimu, a deputy secretary-general of Forum 50 for Digital-Real Economies Integration, told the Global Times on Monday.

Hu said that the government's policy to spur consumption had also injected new momentum into the country's economic growth. "The domestic demand expansion policy continues to transmit to the production side while effectively withstanding the impact of the external environment," the expert noted.

Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, highlighted the macro policies, which are working in concert, with fiscal policy proactively supporting key strategic areas, monetary policy remaining moderately loose, and industrial policy precisely guiding the development of the economy.

Wang told the Global Times that China's unique advantage of concentrating resources to accomplish major undertakings enables the country to rapidly deploy resources, while policy continuity counters short-term fluctuations, preserving the economy's fundamental stability.

The NBS spokesperson said that since the beginning of this year, global economic growth has lacked momentum, trade protectionism has surged, and issues such as geopolitical conflicts and international trade frictions have frequently emerged. The adverse impacts of a changing external environment have intensified, while domestic effective demand remains insufficient, with some enterprises facing operational difficulties. These factors have posed significant challenges to maintaining a stable economic performance. 

Against this backdrop, China achieved a 5.2 percent economic growth rate, fully demonstrating the resilience and adaptability of the economy in navigating uncertainty and instability, as well as its robust capacity to withstand pressure. On a global scale, a 5.2 percent growth rate places China among the top performers among major economies, solidifying its position as the most stable and reliable driver of global economic growth. 

The long-term stable development of the Chinese economy is underpinned by a profound internal logic, resulting from the synergistic interplay and systemic integration of multiple factors, including institutional advantages, supply-side strengths, demand-side potential, and talent advantages, which together generate a powerful combined force, the spokesperson noted.

"China focuses on managing its own affairs well, using the certainty of high-quality development to address the uncertainty of rapid changes in the external environment, continuously enhancing the ability of Chinese industries to allocate resources globally, while enabling the world to share in the dividends of the China's development, ultimately achieving mutual benefit," Hu noted.