China sees weakest growth in 29 years amid trade war with US

New data from the China’s National Bureau of Statistics reveals that the world’s second-largest economy had its weakest economic growth in nearly three decades last year.

Due to the trade war with the U.S. that has lasted nearly two years, Beijing had expected economic growth to fall off some, but 6.1 percent is the lowest percentage of economic growth China has had since 1990, Reuters reports.

Wednesday’s signing of the first phase of a new trade deal between the U.S. and China offered some optimism that China’s economic growth will be able to rebound, but sources told the news service that Beijing is setting a modest target of 6 percent for 2020. The target for 2019 had been 6–6.5 percent, which was reached.

Despite those numbers, Masaaki Kanno, chief economist at Sony Financial Holdings in Tokyo, told Reuters that China’s growth is expected to “come further down to below 6 percent” in 2020.

“The Chinese economy is unlikely to fall abruptly because of … government policies, but at the same time the trend of a further slowdown of the economy will remain unchanged,” he added.