China's Economy Picked Up to 4.5% as the AI Boom Helped Lift Exports
China's economy grew 4.5% in the three months to the end of September, up from the previous period and a rebound from a three-year low, according to official Chinese data. That is below the 5% expansion recorded from January to March, and the artificial intelligence boom helped lift exports along the way.
Underneath the headline number, property is still the drag. Property investment fell by more than 20% in the first nine months compared with the same period a year earlier, and the economy has struggled to shake off a long-running property slump that followed years of overbuilding and excessive borrowing by private developers. The rebound and the slump are, for now, happening side by side.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Put those two figures next to each other — growth of 4.5% in the quarter, property investment down more than 20% over nine months — and they read like two different economies. One is picking up, the other is still going the wrong way, and nothing in the headline growth rate closes the gap between them.
A rebound from a three-year low is a modest bar to clear, and the lift is coming from AI-related export demand. That's the part with an asterisk: global trade tensions and uncertainty over AI investments are clouding the outlook, so a good quarter built on that demand is a good quarter partly rented from elsewhere.