Chongqing- Under the pressures from demand contraction, supply shock, and weakening expectations, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality saw its regional gross domestic product (GDP) exceed 639.8 billion yuan (about $99.8 billion) in the first quarter of 2022, an increase of 5.2% year on year, faster than China's GDP growth rate of 4.8%. 

Data shows stable growth of Chongqing's GDP in Q1 2022. (iChongqing/Zheng Ran)

Overall stability in the economy

The primary industry’s added value reached 28.31 billion yuan, an increase of 5 % over the previous year. The secondary industry’s added value grew by 6.8% to 240.4 billion yuan. The added value of the tertiary sector was up by 4.2%, achieving 371.1 billion yuan. All three growth figures were higher than the national growth rate.

Chongqing faces pressures from demand contraction, supply shock, and weakening expectations. However, the industrial economy shows promising signs. Chongqing’s leading industries, such as automobile manufacturing, medicine, electrical machinery, and equipment manufacturing, increased by 16.8%, 18.2%, and 25.4%, respectively, showing rapid development momentum. 

Investments performed well in the first quarter, with fixed-asset investment increasing by 10.9% yearly, 1.6 percentage points higher than the national fixed-asset investment growth rate. 

The investment in major municipal projects covering areas of infrastructure and industrial investment in the first quarter reached 79.5 billion yuan. The infrastructure investment sector grew by 12.2%, and the industrial investment sector grew by 14.6%, the above two contributing 67.4% of the total investment. Investment in industrial, technological upgrading grew by 46.5%, helping Chongqing build into a national advanced manufacturing center.

447 Billion Yuan Investment, a 14.3% increase

It shows that the traditional and new growth drivers have attained mutual promotion.

A series of new industries, new forms of business, and emerging consumption are developing against the pressure, showing the strong vitality of Chongqing's economy. Chongqing's traditional automobile manufacturing industry supported the leading sector as usual. Meanwhile, new drivers like photovoltaic cells in emerging industries present an encouraging rise. Emerging products such as photovoltaic cells, industrial robots, service robots, and integrated circuit discs saw strong growth, up 92.9%, 34.1%, 20.7%, and 19.4%, respectively.

Chongqing's Internet and related services revenue grew by 31.8%, 13.7 percentage points greater than the national growth rate from January to February. Among them, Internet platforms and Internet data services saw explosive growth, the operating revenue up 50.3% and 3.5 times, respectively.

Overall, Chongqing sees robust growth in emerging consumption in the first quarter. China posted strong new energy vehicles sales in the first quarter, growing by 1.4 times. This figure is much higher in Chongqing, reaching 2.1 times, showing a solid consumer vitality. 

Thanks to Chongqing has promoted innovative measures in cultural tourism in recent years. Rural tourism operating income achieved 23.8 billion yuan in the first quarter and attracted 70 million tourists, with year-on-year growth of 16.1% and 12.2%, respectively.

When evaluating a region's economic prospects, people can not avoid the potential for sustainable growth in the future. Chongqing is facing unprecedented great opportunities such as the development of western China in the new era, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle.

Chongqing signed 670 new investment projects in the first quarter with 447 billion yuan, up 29.3% and 14.3% year on year, respectively. All signs show that Chongqing's economic growth contains sufficient potential to continue its upward climb through 2022.