China said Monday that its economy grew 4.9 percent in the third quarter, the slowest in a year, weighed down by a power crunch and teetering property sector debt.

While the world’s second-largest economy has bounced back faster than most countries from the coronavirus pandemic, other factors are now slowing it down. A fuel shortage has prompted China’s government to implement rolling power outages across the country, disrupting factory production and daily life. Investors are watching warily to see if property developer Evergrande’s debt crisis spreads across the financial sector.

“China’s growth momentum has taken a sharp hit from the combination of deleveraging, squeeze on property speculation, and energy shortages,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist professor at Cornell University.

The early days of the pandemic had hit China’s economy hard, with its gross domestic product contracting 6.8 percent in the first quarter 2020. Since then, the country has returned to growth. In the third quarter 2020, GDP rose 4.9 percent, and it reached 7.9 percent in the second quarter this year.

By Eva Dou in The Washington Post , Oct 17, 2021 at 10:07 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-power-shortages-economy/2021/10/17/3e4a055a-2faf-11ec-8036-7db255bff176_story.html