The Sustainability of China’s Economic Development Has Significantly Increased

China’s primary, secondary, and tertiary industries have continued to grow in strength, and effective demand has expanded. Development between regions has steadily become more coordinated, and the integrated development of urban and rural areas has advanced at a rapid but steady pace. All this has gone a long way toward making economic development more sustainable. 

China has promoted the coordinated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, effecting a structural shift toward the medium-high end

Through rapid industrialization and urbanization, China has gradually moved away from the agriculture-dominated industrial structure of the early PRC, with the share of secondary and tertiary industries steadily increasing. Since 2012, the trends of coordinated development and upgrading have become much more evident in the industrial sector. 

In 2023, the share of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries stood at 7.1%, 38.3%, and 54.6%, respectively. Looking at these sectors individually, modern agriculture has developed at a rapid pace. The value added of large high-tech manufacturing industries now accounts for 15.7% of the total for large industries as a whole. The value added of modern service sectors, such as information transmission, software, and information technology, is also accounting for a growing share of GDP.

Continuous structural improvements have enabled domestic demand to emerge as the main engine of growth. 

At the founding of the PRC, China’s economic foundations were weak, and market demand was small. The three drivers of consumption, investment, and exports all contributed little to economic growth. As a result of continuous economic development, China’s demand structure has been continuously improved, especially since 2012, thanks to the implementation of the strategy to expand domestic demand. With this, domestic demand has increasingly become China’s main driver of growth. 

In 2023, final consumption expenditure, gross capital formation, and net exports of goods and services accounted for 55.7%, 42.1%, and 2.1% of GDP, respectively. From 2013 to 2023, domestic demand accounted for an average of 95.3% of economic growth, with final consumer expenditure contributing 53.9%.

Economic development between regions has become increasingly interconnected, with new growth poles exerting a noticeable impact

Over the past 75 years, China has worked to innovate and improve policies on regional development, with a focus on promoting more balanced economic development between regions. Notably, since 2012, thanks to the full implementation of major regional strategies and the coordinated regional development strategy, a new pattern of regional development has quickly taken shape. 

Between 2013 and 2023, GDP in the central and western regions grew at an average annual rate of 6.9% and 7.1%, respectively, outpacing growth in the eastern region. In 2023, the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Yangtze River Delta region accounted for 46.7% and 24.4% of China’s GDP, respectively.

The level of urbanization has steadily increased, and new results have been achieved in coordinated urban-rural development

Immediately after the founding of the PRC, the divide between urban and rural areas was pronounced. The urbanization rate stood at just 10.64% at the end of 1949 and only 17.92% even at the end of 1978. Industrialization and the gradual relaxation of household registration restrictions have helped speed up the flow of production factors between urban and rural areas, greatly accelerating China’s urbanization process. 

By the end of 2023, the share of permanent urban residents in the total population reached 66.16%, an increase of 48.24 percentage points from the end of 1978. Since 2012, we have made consistent progress in promoting new urbanization and steadily implemented the strategy for rural revitalization, ensuring a greater balance in development between urban and rural areas. By 2023, the ratio of urban to rural per capita disposable income had shrunk to 2.39:1 from 2.88:1 in 2012.

Editor: Yi Xiaowei

(Excerpts from “Opening a New Chapter After 75 Years of Development” by the CPC Leadership Group of the National Bureau of Statistics, Qiushi Journal, English edition, No. 6, 2024)