China growth cools to lowest since 1990

China's economy last year grew at its slowest rate since 1990, as gross domestic product growth cooled in the fourth quarter.

GDP growth in the fourth quarter decelerated to 6.4%, as expected, from 6.5% in the prior quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed on Monday.

For 2018 as a whole, Chinese GDP expanded 6.6%, down from 6.8% the year before.

China's growth target range is between 6% and 6.5% for 2019, according to the South China Morning Post.

In recent weeks, Beijing policymakers have begun to roll out various measures to stimulate the economy, including tax cuts and boosting banking liquidity, while trade representatives have been in and out of talks with the US over a potential resolution to last year's trade skirmishes.

Ning Jizhe, director of China’s National Statistic Bureau, said China’s economy remained “steady overall” but said factors beyond the country's borders were having an impact.

“We see that there are changes in stability, concern about these changes. The external environment is complicated and severe. The economy is facing downward pressure,” he said.

The GDP slowdown was broad-based but there were factors that hinted at a sharper deceleration in momentum, including a steep drop in goods export growth to an estimated 2.1% in the fourth quarter from 6% in the third as global trade momentum creaks amid tariff tensions sparked by the US.

Oxford Economics' Louis Kuijs predicted that growth will remain under pressure in the coming months and policymakers will aim to halt the slowdown in growth, rather than try to engineer a significant pick-up in growth.

"Downward pressures stemming from slowing exports and real estate activity will continue to dominate in the start of 2019. We expect GDP growth to find a floor around Q2 in response to the growth-supporting measures and to be 6.1% in 2019 as a whole," he said.

Naoto Saito, chief researcher at Daiwa Institute of Research in Tokyo, told Reuters that while the government can impose stimulus measures by expanding central infrastructure spending and cutting banks’ reserve requirements, "the problem lies in consumption".

"As the US and China clash on many fronts, consumer sentiment appears to have been hurt. Until now, solid wage growth has been supporting consumption but now there appears to be a sense of vague anxiety about the future.”

In other data out of Chinese statistics office, Chinese industrial production grew 5.7% in December compared to a year ago, picking up from 5.4% the month before and stronger than economists had expected.

Retail sales, meanwhile, also picked up, with growth of 8.2% in December to $5.7trn, up from 8.1% the month before but down from 10.2% a year ago.

China’s birth rate also fell to 10.94 per thousand, down from 12.43 per thousand in 2017 to the lowest since the 1940s, as looser population controls failed to produce the desired effects. Last year 15.23m babies were born, down by around 2m on the year before.

Also on Monday, reports emerged that US-Chian trade talks had faltered over allegations of Chinese intellectual property theft, with little progress on what is perhaps the chief issue raised by President Trump.

Last week it was reported that China had offered to embark on a six-year $1.0trn buying spree of US goods in a bid to reconfigure the trade relationship between the two economic giants.