BEIJING — China’s economy stabilized in the first three months of the year, according to official figures released on Wednesday, after Beijing flooded the financial system with money in a whatever-it-takes approach to arrest a slowdown. Officials said that the Chinese economy, the world’s second largest, grew 6.4 percent in the year’s first quarter compared with the same period in 2018. While economists generally regard China’s economic figures with skepticism, they point to other signs that the country’s current slowdown may have reached bottom. Beijing needs such hopeful signs as it tries to reach a trade deal with the Trump administration while under pressure to lift conditions at home. Economic growth so far this year “laid a sound foundation for the stable and healthy economic development of the whole year,” said Mao Shengyong, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics.

Source: New York Times April 17, 2019 02:21 UTC