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China’s economic growth beat expectations in Q2 2015, but it was still the weakest showing since the global financial crisis.

The world’s second largest economy grew 7% from a year ago – matching growth in Q1 2015, which was the lowest since 2009 when it fell to 6.6%.

A weaker property market and factory production have hampered growth.

Meanwhile, Beijing has rolled out a series of stimulus measures amid the slowdown.

The central bank cut interest rates for the fourth time since November last month to boost economic activity.

Economists are, however, continuing to call for more easing despite the better-than-expected numbers as volatility in the stock markets has sparked concerns of financial turmoil in China.China economy 2015

Growth was expected to dip below the 7% mark and come in at 6.9% for Q2 2015.

The mainland’s benchmark index, the Shanghai Composite, had lost almost a third of its value in the three weeks from mid-June.

The positive growth figures failed to excite investors with the index down 2.4% to 3,830.49 points, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was lower by 0.5% to 24,995.95.

On a quarterly basis, China’s economy expanded 1.7% from April to June, compared to the 1.4% revised figure in Q1 2015.

The government has also had to respond to suggestions that the better data may have been “inflated”.

The National Bureau of Statistics said on July 15 that the data reflecting the positive changes in the economy was “hard won”, and accurate.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at Capital Economics said that while actual growth is “almost certainly” a percentage point or two slower than the official figures show, it does point to signs of a stabilizing economy.

“More broadly, with the drag from the structural slowdown in property and heavy industry now easing, we think that growth is on track to slow only gradually over the course of the next few years,” he said in a note.

Industrial production and retail sales in June were all above forecasts, while fixed-asset investment, a major driver of the economy, also beat expectations in the period.

China’s growth slowed further in Q1 2015, expanding 7% compared to a year earlier, its slowest pace since the global financial crisis in 2009.

The rate was lower than the 7.3% posted for Q4 2014.

In 2014, China’s economy, which is the world’s second largest, grew at its slowest pace since 1990.

It expanded by 7.4% in 2014, missing its annual growth target of 7.5% for the first time in 15 years.

Despite the slowdown, the Chinese economy was still one of the world’s fasting-growing and analysts have said it was proving to be more resilient than expected.

However, they have also said that slower growth, together with China’s cooling property market – a key economic driver – was likely to mean further easing by its central bank this year, including further rate cuts among other measures.China economy 2015

In February 2015, the People’s Bank of China unexpectedly cut interest rates for the second time since last November.

Interest rate cuts together with injections of liquidity are some of the tools Beijing uses to fine tune its economic growth.

The latest growth numbers were by no means a hard landing – which some had feared – and were in line with the latest government target, analysts said.

In Q1 2009, amid the financial crisis, China’s economy expanded 6.6% from a year earlier.

China also released industrial production (IP) figures on April 15 which fell to 5.9% month-on-month in March, down from forecasts for an expansion of 6.9% and the lowest since 2008.

Analysts said these figures were more glaring than the growth data.

Markets were lacklustre following the numbers however, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index up 0.7% and the benchmark Shanghai Composite flat, up just 0.01% at 4,135.91.

China overtakes the USA as the world’s largest economy, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The figures are adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

According to the IMF, the combined purchasing power of China’s citizens now outstrips that of America’s. By the end of 2014, China should make up 16.48& of the world’s purchasing-power adjusted GDP for a total of $17.632 trillion.

The US economy, by contrast, will make up 16.28%, or $17.416 trillion.

China overtakes the USA as the world's largest economy in 2014

China overtakes the USA as the world’s largest economy in 2014

Purchasing power parity seeks to address the fact that while wages tend to be lower in “developing” countries than in mature economies like the US, the price of goods and servicing is also typically much lower.

The Economist’s Big Mac Index, for example, quotes the price of the McDonalds staple in July at $4.80 in the US, but just $2.73 in China.

PPP, therefore, bases economic output on what a country’s citizens can purchase, as opposed to an unadjusted GDP figure using market exchange rate, which is more often quoted.

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However, the figure is controversial. It requires the comparison of a huge amount of goods and services, and is therefore a vast statistical undertaking that can only be conducted infrequently with estimates used during intervening periods. The methods used to collect the data have also led to controversy in the past.

When it comes the raw GDP data base on exchange rates, China will eventually also overtake the US if it carries on growing as it has, but that is still likely to take many years.

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