According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on April 18, China’s national economy stabilized and grew in the first quarter of this year, with GDP growing by 4.5 percent year-on-year.
The growth of consumption in China has significantly accelerated since the beginning of the year, the total sale of social consumer goods increased by 5.8 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, which contributed 66.6 percent to economic growth. At the same time, China worked vigorously to stabilize and improve the quality of foreign trade and actively developed trade with emerging markets and developing countries under the Belt and Road Initiative. China’s total import and export of goods in the first quarter amounted to 9.8877 trillion yuan (approximately 1.44 trillion dollars), with export growth of 8.4 percent. The total import and export of goods to countries along the “Belt and Road” increased by 16.8 percent.