How Is China’s Economy Doing? Not Nearly as Well as China Says It Is

This year was supposed to be a turning point for China, a time when the economy headed toward recovery. It turned out to be the opposite.

It’s hard to remember now, but at the start of 2023, the country’s prospects couldn’t have been brighter—in part because of the terrible human price leaders had elected to pay for getting back to growth by ripping off the Band-Aid of its zero-Covid policy toward the end of 2022.

Six months later, everybody was scrambling to understand why their predictions had gone awry.

The common answer—that it was due to the damage to household sentiment caused by draconian pandemic lockdowns—missed the forest for the trees. Well before the pandemic, Beijing’s property bubble, government fiscal tricks and delays in market overhauls had foreordained stagnation. Covid-era conditions didn’t cause this structural crunch, but rather masked its inevitability. On the eve of 2023, Beijing was reporting just 3% GDP expansion, though it is easy to argue that growth in 2022 was actually negative.

Despite the obvious, Chinese officials forecast a 5% to 6% target for 2023.

Once the target was set, officials got to work to make sure it happened. But with business investment still flat or negative due to the still-falling property sector, net exports declining and government spending constrained by shrinking tax and fee revenues, the full burden of delivering China’s forecast growth fell on household consumption.

By spring, it was becoming evident that getting enough consumption to drive 5% GDP growth would require government stimulus. However, though support for state-owned enterprises and banks was perennial, rumours of leader distaste for support for households as “welfarism” swirled, and fiscal stimulus never happened.

Changing the facts

This left officials with only one option for making their targets: They changed previous consumption statistics to make the numbers add up to 5%-plus growth for 2023. While this result is fundamentally inconsistent with evidence over the year, the IMF accepted Beijing’s calculations and updated its own 2023 China projection, out of cycle, on Nov. 7.

An independent tally of 2023 growth might accept Beijing’s official figures of 5% consumption growth as of the third quarter, but the other components of GDP remain flat or negative: government spending, net exports and business investment. Taken together, depending on how negative property investment is assumed to have been in 2023, China’s 2023 GDP probably grew 0 to 2.5%.

This slower growth estimate is far out of whack with the official figures endorsed by Beijing and the IMF, but is far easier to reconcile with the anecdotal evidence this year:

Localities cutting bus service and street lighting
Unexplained alteration of statistics to inflate apparent growth
Suppression of data series telling a bleak story
Negative foreign direct investment for the first time in modern history
Price deflation
Emergency expansion of fiscal deficit despite reporting solid growth
Further takeover of private developers
Net collection of debt repayment from Belt and Road Initiative countries rather than new official development assistance
Persistent effort to fix the value of the renminbi stronger against the dollar all year
Among the worst-performing major stock markets of the year
Strong reported and unreported capital outflows
The lowest marriage and birth rates on record

These are just selected bearish indications that are widely known. Officials regularly airbrush over evidence of economic stress, and citizens can be punished for being negative.

Private pessimism

In private, though, Chinese economists were more frank this year. One stated to me that having already shrunk from greater than 70% of the size of the U.S. economy to 67%, bad policy choices were locking in an inevitable descent to 40%. Another said it was a miracle the property downturn hadn’t spilled over into a full-blown financial crisis, yet. Yet another said that neglect of economic growth could lead to social and political instability.

Despite this evidence, Chinese officials put political targets over economic credibility, finding ways to claim growth was on track, such as by stipulating that hard-to-measure services activity was suddenly booming—a claim that couldn’t be refuted given the paucity of quality services-sector data. Authorities insisted the system was working fine and GDP growth would be above 5%, brushing off questions about why foreign firms were leaving, private domestic firms were refusing to invest or make new hires, and consumers were behaving with such caution.

Beijing often claimed weak global conditions explained China’s headwinds, but the U.S.’s performance was the mirror opposite of China’s this year. Having already jacked up interest rates to 4.5% from near-zero a year before, in 2023 the Fed lifted rates four more times to 5.5%. This was widely expected to lead to recession, but by the third quarter real U.S. GDP was holding even with China’s (exaggerated) 4.9% growth, inflation was stabilizing, employment levels were excellent, and foreign firms (including Chinese, where permitted) were making a beeline to the U.S. to avail themselves of subsidies and tax breaks.

What a difference a year makes. In January, the betting was that China’s growth would be five times U.S. growth; instead, taking the statistical funny business out of China’s numbers, the U.S. growth is outpacing China’s. Given the weak renminbi, this picture is even stronger in U.S. dollar terms.

Business leaders have long known that doing business in China meant tolerating risk. There was political risk, intellectual-property-theft risk, market-competition risk, reputational risk, exchange-rate risk, and countless other concerns. But one thing that didn’t require CEO attention was macroeconomic risk: China was a pain, but since it was a huge fraction of global growth, that was tolerable.

This was the year that changed, and macroeconomic risk became just as concerning in China as it is in other economies. In 2022, Covid could be blamed for everything; in 2023, policy and business leaders recognized that China’s goldilocks era was over. Now Beijing would have the same odds of solving unresolved middle-income problems as anyone else.

What next?

Three implications for 2024 flow from this.

First, after the severe 2021-23 property correction, we are approaching a bottom, and construction could add to growth next year instead of subtracting. But few other cyclical drivers are set to turn up, and long-term structural constraints on consumption, government spending and net exports remain.

Crisis risks and liabilities were only kicked down the road in 2023, not resolved, and will continue to drive anxiety in 2024. Compared with this year’s anemic actual GDP, China could see a modest cyclical improvement in 2024, but nowhere near the aspiration of 5%.

Second, 2024 is the year the global spillover implications of China’s slowdown will sink in. Advanced economies will downgrade the importance of market access in China, and Global South nations will be forced to find other engines of development. This means a new phase of geopolitical conditions, with the anchor assumption of a rising China and declining U.S. being retired. The implications of this will be far reaching and challenging to forecast.

Finally, the 2024 wild card is that China could turn back to the market pragmatism that made it the star of globalization over past decades. Security and political experts doubt that Xi Jinping has a single reform-oriented bone in his body. Maybe not, but if market overhaul is the only thing that can enable the Communist Party to pay its bills and finance its aspirations, then no one should rule it out.

In fact, in his first term, starting in 2013, Xi tried to make the market more central, only to suspend the effort after realizing how challenging it would be. Yes, it is difficult to imagine China reversing course on statism today, but it was just as hard to imagine it ending zero-Covid policies last year, or selling stakes in the national oil companies to foreigners 20 years ago.

Reform isn’t the base case for China 2024, but China has a record of surprising, and reform is more than a trivial possibility. That is why smart firms are protecting the option to stay in the China game, even while breathless American politicians talk about gratuitous and unlimited decoupling. In 2024, smart Western officials will give priority to rationality on China, so they can take advantage of Beijing’s economic stumbles—without needlessly damaging the economic and geopolitical interests of their own nations.

Reporting season has once again reminded investors that a strong profit does not guarantee a rising share price, and a large loss does not always trigger a sell-off. What matters most is how each result compares with expectations and, increasingly, what management says about the year ahead. During the August 2026 season, companies offering credible turnarounds or unexpectedly strong guidance were rewarded handsomely, while those flagging weaker margins, slowing demand or greater uncertainty were punished.

The following ranking draws on Morningstar’s review of 164 ASX-listed companies and measures each company’s share-price movement on the day it reported. This captures the market’s immediate response to the earnings announcement, before subsequent economic developments, dividends and company-specific news cloud the picture. Here are the five biggest winners, and the five hardest-hit losers, of the season so far.

The five winners

1. Bapcor (ASX:BAP): +41.0%

Bapcor delivered reporting season’s largest relief rally after presenting early evidence that its troubled automotive-parts business was stabilising. Although underlying revenue fell 1.8% to $1.92 billion and underlying NPAT collapsed 85% to $10.8 million, underlying EBITDA of $152.5 million exceeded guidance.

More importantly, working-capital initiatives released $68.5 million in the second half, lifting cash conversion to 109.4% and reducing net debt by 63% to $135 million. The statutory loss was $431.6 million, largely because of non-cash impairments. Investors focused on improving operational momentum, stronger liquidity and management’s expectation of modest FY27 revenue growth.

2. Zip Co (ASX:ZIP): +18.2%

Zip comfortably surpassed its FY26 targets, sending the buy-now-pay-later provider’s shares sharply higher. Transaction volume rose 23% to $16.7 billion, while cash earnings before tax, depreciation and amortisation jumped 58% to a record $268.9 million. Statutory profit climbed 46% to $116.4 million, and the cash operating margin expanded by 4.2 percentage points to 20%.

The strongest signal was guidance for FY27 cash earnings of $340 million—around 26% growth and above analysts’ forecasts. US transaction volume increased 42.5% and now represents three-quarters of group volume, offsetting weaker customer activity in Australia.

3. CSL (ASX:CSL): +17.3%

CSL’s result was hardly spectacular in isolation, but it cleared a market bar that had fallen dramatically following earlier downgrades and restructuring announcements. Underlying NPATA was US$3.1 billion, down 2% in constant-currency terms, while operating cash flow reached US$3.51 billion.

CSL maintained its full-year dividend at US$2.92 per share and completed a A$1 billion buyback. The real catalyst was FY27 guidance for approximately 5% underlying profit growth, compared with market expectations closer to 2%. After an extended period of earnings disappointments, investors interpreted the outlook as evidence that CSL’s core plasma business was approaching a sustainable recovery.

4. Judo Capital (ASX:JDO): +16.9%

Judo Capital demonstrated strong operating leverage as its specialist business-lending franchise expanded. Full-year profit before tax rose 34% to $168.1 million, while pre-provision profit increased 42%. Gross loans and advances grew 18% to $14.7 billion, reaching the top of the bank’s guidance range and comfortably exceeding broader system growth.

Deposits increased 24% to $12.2 billion, return on equity improved by 1.1 percentage points to 6.4%, and earnings per share rose 29% to 9.9 cents. Reaffirmation of the FY27 outlook gave investors confidence that loan growth could continue without sacrificing margins or credit quality.

5. Super Retail Group (ASX:SUL): +15.8%

The owner of Supercheap Auto, rebel, BCF and Macpac reported record sales of $4.2 billion, up 3.2%, despite cautious discretionary spending. Profitability went backwards: normalised profit before tax fell 7% to $306 million and normalised NPAT declined 2.8% to $226 million as transformation spending weighed on margins. Nevertheless, the result exceeded subdued expectations, online sales grew 5.3% and membership across the group’s loyalty programs reached 13.1 million. Investors were also encouraged by positive early FY27 trading, stable gross margins and continued market-share gains. A fully franked 33-cent final dividend added to the appeal.

The five losers

1. Hansen Technologies (ASX:HSN): –21.2%

Hansen’s historic result met expectations, but investors recoiled from its outlook. The utility and communications software provider achieved an underlying EBITDA margin of 31%, exceeding its 30% target, while generating strong cash flow. However, management designated FY27 an “investment and transition year”, signalling a roughly five-percentage-point margin contraction as spending on products, sales capabilities and organisational changes increased.

Revenue had already been broadly flat, leaving investors concerned that the investment program would depress earnings before new growth appeared. Leadership changes, including the chief executive’s departure, added uncertainty. Management expects revenue growth and margins above 30% to return in FY28, but the market was unwilling to wait.

2. Life360 (ASX:360): –19.4%

Life360’s headline growth was impressive: quarterly revenue rose 38% to US$159 million, subscription revenue increased 31%, and adjusted EBITDA climbed 53% to US$31.1 million. Monthly active users reached 102.4 million and paying circles grew 27% to 3.2 million. The sell-off reflected expectations rather than a collapsing business.

Net income fell 18%, the net margin contracted from 6% to 3%, hardware shipments dropped 18%, and full-year EBITDA guidance was merely maintained. After a strong valuation run, investors wanted a larger upgrade and clearer evidence that heavy investment in advertising, international expansion and artificial intelligence would generate additional earnings.

3. PEXA Group (ASX:PXA): –17.0%

PEXA reported a 7% increase in continuing-operations revenue and 12% EBITDA growth to $152 million, accompanied by a two-percentage-point margin expansion. Free cash flow increased 39%, suggesting the core Australian electronic-conveyancing platform remained highly profitable. Investors instead concentrated on management’s warning that property-transfer volumes could decline, alongside regulatory uncertainty surrounding the fees PEXA can charge.

The company is also continuing to invest heavily in its loss-making international expansion. Morningstar considered the market reaction excessive, arguing that structural transfer-volume assumptions had not materially changed, but the combination of softer near-term activity and regulatory risk overwhelmed the respectable headline numbers.

4. SEEK (ASX:SEK): –14.3%

SEEK produced solid FY26 figures, including 10% revenue growth to $1.20 billion, a 15% rise in EBITDA and 28% growth in adjusted earnings per share. It also lifted its fully franked annual dividend by 13% to a record 52 cents. Those achievements were overshadowed by falling paid job-ad volumes and cautious FY27 assumptions.

The statutory accounts included a $201 million loss from the SEEK Growth Fund and $377 million of significant items, making the headline result considerably less attractive. Investors were particularly concerned that economic weakness could limit volumes while the company continued investing in platform integration and artificial-intelligence products.

5. JB Hi-Fi (ASX:JBH): –12.3%

JB Hi-Fi’s full-year result was broadly respectable, with group sales rising 5% to $11.1 billion and underlying earnings per share increasing 6% to $4.48. The damage came from its current-trading update. Australian sales were almost flat during the June quarter and deteriorated further in July, while earnings in the core Australian electronics business fell 3.6%.

Housing-related categories were particularly weak as higher living costs and interest rates constrained household budgets. With JB Hi-Fi entering the season on a demanding valuation, an in-line historic result was not sufficient: the loss of sales momentum prompted investors to rapidly reduce their expectations for FY27.

Overall, the season showed that share prices react less to whether profits rose or fell than to the gap between results and expectations. Bapcor was rewarded for being less troubled than feared, while several fundamentally profitable companies were punished because their outlooks failed to justify elevated valuations.