China's economy showed robust growth momentum in the first quarter of 2025, laying a solid foundation for sustained high-quality future development, according to experts.
Data released Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that China's GDP grew by 5.4 percent year on year in the first three months, reaching 31.88 trillion yuan (about 4.42 trillion U.S. dollars).
In separate interviews with China Central Television (CCTV), experts said the favorable performance reflected a "steady and sound" start to the year, underpinned by robust growth across multiple sectors.
"Judged by the performance in the first quarter, the economic operation has got off to a good start so far this year. Whether from investment, consumption and exports on the demand side, or from industry and emerging sectors on the production side, there have been bright performances. On the basis of the strong industrial growth last year, the growth momentum continued into the first quarter of this year. In particular, the consumption sector has shown a trend of steady recovery in goods consumption, and the contribution of consumption to overall economic growth clearly increased in the first quarter," said Huang Hanquan, head of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
Experts noted that in the first quarter, China's economy got off to a steady and solid start, with multiple sectors, such as industry, consumption, and investment, gaining robust growth momentum.
This robust growth momentum has significantly boosted market confidence and injected powerful impetus into the country's high-quality economic development, they said.
"Investment in some high-tech sectors has also been particularly impressive. With breakthroughs in the development of large models and artificial intelligence, such as those led by DeepSeek, many companies have actively increased their investment in these fields. Additionally, in traditional strong sectors like new energy, there have actually been continued breakthroughs in technological development, with their investment thresholds keeping going low, leading to a steady rise in investment in these fields as well," said He Ping, vice dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University.
"One factor is the fundamental of China's economy itself, which has shown signs of explosive growth driven by sci-tech innovation. In addition, the implementation of more proactive and effective macroeconomic policies, including strengthened fiscal and monetary measures, has played a positive and encouraging role in boosting confidence among both domestic and international market participants," said Feng Ming, director of the Macroeconomic Policy and Evaluation Research Office at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
Multiple favorable factors boost economic growth in Q1: experts
