On the 19th, the National Bureau of Statistics released China's 2025 economic "report card." The annual Gross Domestic Product reached 140.1879 trillion yuan, surpassing the 140 trillion yuan milestone for the first time, marking a year-on-year growth of 5%. On the same day, the China News Service's "Guoshi Direct Train" hosted the "2026 China Economic Situation Analysis Meeting," where multiple economists interpreted the latest data across various fields including macroeconomics, consumption, the property market, trade, and finance. How did China's economy perform across different sectors in 2025? How will 2026 begin its journey?
Advancing under pressure, China's economy demonstrated resilience, vitality, and an extraordinary character amidst complexity. "This substantial report card fully illustrates that China's economy operated steadily overall in 2025 and achieved the expected targets," said Chen Wenling, Vice Chairman of the Academic Committee and former Chief Economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges. She pointed out that the Chinese economy encountered a series of pressures in 2025: intense major-power competition; a reshaping international landscape; the impacts of the "trade war"; and domestic issues, both longstanding and new. Under such heavy pressure, achieving the expected targets was no easy feat, it was remarkable, and compared to some other major global economies, it was quite exceptional.
Chen Wenling stated that China's economy is developing with improved quality and structural changes: traditional industries are accelerating their transformation and upgrading, strategic emerging industries are being further optimized, and future industries like quantum computing, industrial robots, artificial intelligence, and large models are also developing rapidly. She emphasized that more proactive fiscal policies and appropriately accommodative monetary policies played a crucial role, maintaining vitality and momentum in the unified national market. Particularly, the introduction of the Private Economy Promotion Law and revisions to the market access negative list provided institutional guarantees for invigorating the market. Furthermore, import-export trade and opening-up made significant strides, with "the door of opening-up swinging ever wider, and an open China playing a major leading role for an open world."
The property market showed positive signs. Wu Jing, Director of the Tsinghua University Real Estate Research Center, stated that the real estate market in 2025 generally exhibited a trend of stabilization amidst fluctuations, showing positive signs not only in the short-term cycle but also making significant progress from a long-term cyclical perspective, laying a solid foundation for market stabilization in 2026. He pointed out four major positive phenomena in the 2025 property market: first, the total transaction volume is clearly trending towards stability; second, differentiation between and within cities has further increased; third, greater effectiveness was achieved in controlling new supply; and fourth, inventory saw a certain degree of reduction.
In Wu Jing's view, the most landmark event in the real estate sector in 2025 was the comprehensive completion of the task to ensure housing project deliveries. The major risks accumulated under the old model characterized by high debt, high leverage, and rapid turnover significantly收敛 (converged/lessened) within the year, not only safeguarding socio-economic stability but also laying a solid foundation for the industry's subsequent healthy development. Simultaneously, the new development model is gradually becoming clearer. On one hand, real estate is further returning to its essential attribute of benefiting people's livelihoods; on the other hand, urban development is shifting from large-scale incremental expansion to a phase dominated by existing stock, more closely integrating with high-quality urban development focused primarily on urban renewal, which objectively provides substantial development opportunities for traditional industries including real estate and construction.
Wu Jing expressed that policy toolkits on both the supply and demand sides of the real estate market continued to improve in 2025, creating a favorable policy environment for market recovery, and marginal improvement measures are still being rolled out successively, expected to work synergistically. He expressed confidence in the market continuing to trend towards stability in 2026.
"Investing in People" unleashes long-term consumption potential. Official data shows that total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded 50 trillion yuan in 2025, an increase of 3.7% over the previous year, ranking among the top global retail markets. The contribution of final consumption expenditure to economic growth was 52%, 5 percentage points higher than the previous year. Additionally, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) remained flat compared to the previous year, and per capita disposable income reached 43,377 yuan, a nominal increase of 5.0% year-on-year. "Against the backdrop of profound and complex changes in the development environment, this 'report card' is satisfactory," said Zhang Ying, Vice Dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.
In his view, human development is the core driver of consumption. Only when consumers possess sufficient purchasing power and willingness to consume will producers be prompted to enhance products and services from multiple angles, rather than competing on a single dimension. Zhang Ying pointed out that one difficulty in boosting consumption is the relatively low proportion of labor income. Simultaneously, intergenerational support is very pronounced in China; if the concerns of the working population are not resolved, even with some income growth, it may not necessarily translate into consumption. Another major challenge is the lack of consumption scenarios and willingness. Cultivating habitual long-term consumption among consumers is a crucial change in China's economic transition from reliance on investment and foreign trade to being driven by consumption.
He suggested that directing resources towards areas that constitute "investing in people," such as education, employment, healthcare, and social security, can not only unleash long-term consumption potential but also serve as a driving force to break the cycle of "involution."
Future advantages in foreign trade remain. Against the backdrop of slowing global economic growth and rising trade protectionism, the total value of goods imports and exports for the full year 2025 reached 45.4687 trillion yuan, an increase of 3.8% over the previous year. This marks the 9th consecutive year of growth for China's imports and exports, also the longest streak of consecutive growth since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the view of Zhou Mi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, China's advantages in foreign trade still exist in the future.
He pointed out that this advantage is not merely about pursuing the expansion of export scale, but rather, through its own stability, helping trade partners better hedge against external uncertainties. "China's exports still possess strong growth momentum in the future," Zhou Mi said. On one hand, this comes from international demand; under circumstances where some countries are raising tariffs and restricting imports/exports, Chinese supply can help other countries reduce trade "supply chain breaks," which is crucial for international industrial cooperation and economic development. On the other hand, it stems from China's continuous efforts to improve the trade environment, including a series of measures such as the signing of the protocol to upgrade the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area to version 3.0, which are expected to help enterprises and markets obtain more effective institutional guarantees.
Furthermore, China's continuous pursuit of new technologies and new factors creates favorable conditions for foreign trade through new developments in the trade field. Beyond goods trade, China has stronger development momentum in service trade and digital trade. With the evolution of trade methods, the efficiency of trade supply will be further enhanced.
More proactive and effective macroeconomic policies provide a solid guarantee. Zhao Xijun, Co-Dean of the China Capital Market Research Institute at Renmin University of China, stated that more proactive and effective macroeconomic policies provided a solid guarantee for economic growth in 2025. In terms of aggregate support, fiscal and monetary tools formed a powerful synergy. On the fiscal front, government expenditure in 2025 provided strong support for stable economic growth and livelihood保障 (safeguards).
The financial sector performed notably well, with the incremental aggregate financing to the real economy reaching 35.6 trillion yuan for the full year of 2025. The scale of financial support formed by the coordination of fiscal and financial policies provided important assurance for achieving the 5% economic growth target. The policy effects were particularly outstanding in terms of risk prevention and expectation guidance. Following the two rounds of macroeconomic policies introduced on September 24, 2024, and May 7, 2025, confidence in the capital market was continuously boosted. The Shanghai Composite Index rose from around 2600 points to over 4000 points currently, with average daily trading volume exceeding 3 trillion yuan, hitting a record high, highlighting the policy's role in improving market expectations.
Looking ahead to 2026, Zhao Xijun believes that macroeconomic policy will maintain its proactive and effective orientation, with the intensity expected to increase further. 2026 will see the continuation of more proactive fiscal policies with enhanced precision and effectiveness; the continuation of appropriately accommodative monetary policy, strengthening counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments to continuously empower high-quality economic development.
New Quality Productive Forces are the key determinant for stabilizing growth. "In the process of China's economy developing towards new and superior qualities, New Quality Productive Forces have become the key engine," said Zhou Jingtong, Vice President and Researcher at the Bank of China Research Institute. He stated that during the continuous transformation towards "new and superior" qualities in 2025, New Quality Productive Forces promoted significant changes in at least four aspects: first, the "new and superior" direction of the industrial structure became more prominent; second, the competitive advantage of exported goods continued to be highlighted; third, the supporting role of investment in key areas became more evident; and fourth, the leading and driving role of emerging consumption became conspicuous.
He pointed out that New Quality Productive Forces are the key "decisive factor" for stable economic growth during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period (2026-2030). They are characterized by a substantial increase in total factor productivity, breaking away from traditional economic growth methods and productivity development paths, and shaping a new production function. From an industrial perspective, traditional industries possess huge potential for intelligent, green, and integrated development. Industries such as mining, metallurgy, chemicals, light industry, textiles, machinery, shipbuilding, and construction will be revitalized under the guidance of New Quality Productive Forces.
Emerging industries like new energy, new materials, aerospace, and the low-altitude economy will also develop rapidly. Future industries such as quantum technology, bio-manufacturing, brain-computer interfaces, embodied intelligence/robotics, and sixth-generation mobile communication (6G) are all important areas for development during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. Regarding financial support for developing New Quality Productive Forces, Zhou Jingtong stated that financial support has been increasing in recent years, and the next step requires further adjustment and optimization, such as accelerating the development of direct financing, cultivating and growing patient capital, and establishing related industrial investment funds.
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