China’s export boom helps to widen regional growth gap

China’s rapid economic recovery in the first half of the year was fueled by manufacturing-heavy provinces on the eastern coastal line of the country, widening the gap with inland regions.

Five of the six best-performing provinces in the first six months of the year were from the southern and eastern parts of China, including major manufacturing and export hubs Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong, according to official regional data collated by Bloomberg News.

Export growth has been surprisingly resilient this year, surging 38.6% in dollar terms in the first half of the year as the pandemic fueled demand for Chinese-made goods. That’s helped to underpin strong economic growth of 12.7% in the period.

The central province of Hubei, which was the epicenter of the pandemic, saw the size of its economy expanding 28.5% in the first half of the year from the same period a year ago, the fastest among all localities, largely due to an extremely low base of comparison in 2020.

Twenty-eight of China’s 31 provincial-level jurisdictions have released first-half economic data so far, with Hebei, Xinjiang and Tibet yet to publish their results. Around a third of them reported faster gross domestic product growth than the national rate.

In sharp contrast to southeast China, provinces in less-developed western regions and the rust-belt northeastern parts of the country have lagged behind. Their economies are traditionally more reliant on government investment in infrastructure and property, which have slowed this year as local authorities curbed borrowing and regulators tightened rules to rein in the real estate market