China’s economy slows down to 6.5 per cent growth in third quarter

China’s economy cooled to a 6.5 per cent growth in the third quarter, the slowest growth rate in almost a decade, the government said Friday.

The Chinese economy grew by 6.8 per cent in the first quarter and by 6.7 per cent in the second quarter, against the background of a trade war with the United States.

The economic growth rate for the first nine months was 6.7 per cent.

It marked the slowest year-on-year quarterly growth since the first quarter of 2009, during the global recession, when China’s economy grew 6.1 per cent.

The world’s second-largest economy has operated "in a reasonable range, maintaining an overall stable, steady and progressive development trend" in the first nine months of the year, said Mao Shengyong, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics.

"At the same time, we must also see that the external-challenge variables have increased significantly, the operation of the economy has changed steadily, the stability has been moderate, and the downward pressure has increased," he said.

China and the US have been waging a trade war in recent months, with Washington slapping tariffs on a total of 250 billion dollars worth of Chinese goods, roughly half of all of China’s exports to the US.

Beijing retaliated with duties on 110 billion dollars worth of US imports including soybeans, cars and aircraft.

The US says China is engaging in unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. US President Donald Trump also wants to slash the countries’ trade deficit, which reached 375 billion dollars last year.

After the latest round of tariffs went into effect last month, negotiations appeared to have stalled. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet at the G20 summit in November in Argentina.

The Chinese economy has grown robustly in recent decades, on the back of industrial production and strong exports. Last year, the economy grew 6.9 per cent.