Because of the huge impact of the closure of Shanghai, which has 25 million people, comparing this spring and last spring provides “a misleading picture of China’s economic performance,” said Diana Choyleva, the chief economist at Enodo Economics in London.Instead, analysts said, a more accurate measure of the economy emerges by comparing the second quarter of 2023 with the previous three months, after the “zero Covid” policy was scrapped.And by that measure, output was only 0.8 percent higher in the second quarter than the first quarter. When projected out for an entire year, that is a growth rate of a little over 3 percent a year, down from about 9 percent in the first quarter.Ch …
