After China announced its economy grew 5.2 percent in 2023, some overseas media outlets claimed that China's economic recovery was sluggish and largely disappointing. However, these pessimistic views, prevalent in the Western media, are biased and inaccurate.

Bearing the impact of the three-year COVID pandemic, the Chinese economy still faced lingering side-effects of it in 2023, with the pandemic's scarring effect severely weakened market confidence. During the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held in late July last year, the policymakers emphasized that the country's economic recovery was undergoing "wave-like" development.

Looking back, the market's expectations at the end of 2022 were overly optimistic. China set a GDP growth target of about 5 percent in early 2023, which was a more rational and reasonable approach. The Chinese economy successfully surpassed that target.

China's GDP growth rate has continued to increase despite the global economic downturn. While the global economy is expected to experience a slowdown last year to 3.0 growth, compared with 3.5 percent in 2022, China's growth rate increased from 3 percent in 2022 to 5.2 percent in 2023. This was a remarkable achievement that required overcoming external pressures and internal challenges.

China's economic growth rate remains relatively higher than other countries like the US. And, China is not the only country facing a slowdown in growth - lower than pre-pandemic levels. 

Despite the global economic slump, China is still able to achieve a moderate to high growth rate of about 5 percent, which plays an important role in stabilizing the global economy. China's contribution to global economic growth last year was still about 30 percent, demonstrating that China remains an important driving force of the global growth.

China has aimed to actively cultivate new growth drivers through technological innovation, green development and data-enabled transformation. Despite the overall decline in exports last year, exports of the "New Three Items" grew rapidly, exceeding the 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) mark.

China has achieved similar growth in other fields. From an industrial perspective, the value-added growth rate of high-tech industries is eye-catching. From an investment perspective, the investment growth rate in the high-tech manufacturing and services industries was higher than that in fixed-asset investment. Additionally, China has achieved international competitive advantages in many industrial fields, such as in green and renewable energies.

In 2024, the Chinese economy will benefit from several favorable conditions. First, with the further weakening of the pandemic impacts, China can expect economic and social activities to return to a normal level. This will stimulate continued growth in consumption and investment, and contribute to expanding the scale of the economy.

Second, the implementation of fiscal and monetary stimulus policies will continue to provide the necessary support for stabilizing economic growth and promoting the recovery. The Central Economic Work Conference made it clear that macroeconomic regulation will be intensified.

Third, China's plan to implement reform and opening-up measures in key areas will inject new vitality into economic growth. Technological innovation and the next industrial revolution will become new driving forces for economic development.

If China follows the deployment of decisions by the Central Economic Work Conference, promotes high-quality development and intensifies structural adjustments while maintaining necessary policy support, there will be positive momentum for the economic recovery.

However, China should also recognize that the complexity, severity and uncertainty of the external environment in 2024 still exist. From a positive perspective, the US Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes are nearing an end and there is the possibility of rate cuts, which will expand the space for China's macroeconomic policies and encourage European and US companies to replenish their inventories, improving overseas demand for Chinese goods.

In addition, ongoing high-level exchanges and dialogue between China and the US will help control their tensions.

However, China should be aware of the economic uncertainties, especially in the late stage of the US Federal Reserve's tightening cycle. Insufficient tightening may lead to the Fed reconsidering rate hikes, while excessive tightening may cause a hard landing for the US economy.

According to the World Trade Organization's forecast in October 2023, global merchandise trade growth may recover from 0.8 percent in 2023 to more than 3 percent in 2024. Therefore, China expects its foreign trade exports will likely recover and grow in 2024.

China experienced fluctuations in foreign enterprises' investment in 2023. However, fluctuations in foreign investment are normal, not only in China but also in other countries, including the US. 

Since total global foreign direct investment fell from 2020 to 2022, while China's attractiveness to foreign investment continued to steadily increase, it was not surprising to see some adjustments in scale in 2023. 

In addition, the impact of non-economic factors in reshaping global industrial and supply chains may have some influence on China's utilization of foreign investment.

China is still a growing economy with a colossal market, so it still has an appeal to foreign investment. With the normalization of communication and exchanges with the outside world, investors are paying more and more attention to China's market, and confidence in China's economic fundamentals keeps on recovering.

Profits of China's major industrial enterprises fell 2.3 percent in 2023, continuing a month-on-month narrowing that began in March, an ongoing recovery that underscores the resilience of the Chinese economy, experts said.

In 2023, the profits of industrial companies whose annual main business revenue exceeded 20 million yuan ($2.82 million) stood at 7.69 trillion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 2.3 percent, narrowing by 2.1 percentage points from the first 11 months of last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Saturday.

State-owned enterprises achieved total profits of 2.26 trillion yuan in 2023, down 3.4 percent year-on-year, while private enterprises had total profits of 2.34 trillion yuan, up 2 percent, NBS data showed.

With domestic demand improving gradually and industrial production picking up steadily, the profitability of large-scale industrial enterprises has continued to recover, further consolidating the foundation for high-quality development of the industrial economy, NBS statistician Yu Weining said in a statement on Saturday.

While the total profits of major industrial enterprises declined amid the multiple challenges at home and abroad, the narrowing trend has sent a positive signal that the Chinese economy is gradually overcoming various difficulties and stabilizing on an improving trend, Zhu Keli, executive director of China Institute of New Economy, told the Global Times on Saturday.

In terms of the moving trend of industrial profits throughout the year 2023, major industrial enterprises' profits saw a sharp narrowing of decline, given the year-on-year decrease of 22.9 percent in January-February, Yu said.

By quarter, the profit of industrial enterprises in the first quarter of 2023 fell by 21.4 percent year-on-year, with a 12.7 percent fall in the second quarter, before recording a 7.7 percent gain in the third quarter and a 16.2 percent increase in the fourth.

In December, profits of industrial enterprises rose by 16.8 percent year-on-year, growing for a fifth consecutive month, according to the NBS.

Overall, more than 60 percent of industries recorded profit gains in 2023. With the deepening industrial chain optimization and upgrading, the efficiency of the equipment manufacturing industry continues to improve, further strengthening its supporting role for the profit recovery of industrial enterprises, Yu said.

Specifically, due to the rapid rise in shipbuilding orders and the record high automobile production, the transport equipment industry saw profits jump by 22 percent year-on-year, while profits of the automobile industry increased 5.9 percent.

Against the backdrop of complex global economic changes, the recovering industrial profits reflected the tenacious resilience and innovation vitality of Chinese industries, Zhu noted.

Chinese industrial enterprises not only pay attention to short-term benefits, but also focus on the long-term development, constantly enhancing their core competitiveness and market adaptability by strengthening technological innovation and improving added value of products. Those efforts are gradually being translated into concrete economic benefits, offering a strong support for the recovery of industrial profits, according to Zhu.

"Industrial enterprises' performance has pointed to an overall trend that the Chinese economy is undergoing a continuous improvement," Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Saturday.

With the continued policy support, the improvement in the operating conditions across the industrial sector is expected to continue in 2024, Xi said.

Despite facing multiple challenges, China's manufacturing industry has shown strong resilience in recent years, according to a report released on Saturday by the China Finance 40 Forum -- a Chinese think tank specializes on issues of economic and financial policy.

The report said that the growth rate of China's manufacturing sector investment has continued to be higher than the growth rate of the total capital investment and the GDP growth rate since 2020.

Meanwhile, the proportion of investment by private enterprises has further increased, and the manufacturing investment has been concentrating in industries such as electrical equipment, telecommunication and computing information.

The upgrading trajectory of China's manufacturing industry is consistent with the experience of high-income countries, said Zhang Bin, a senior CF40 researcher and deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of World Economics and Politics.

A modern service industry is a necessary condition for the upgrade of the manufacturing industry as it is difficult to see the sustainability of manufacturing investment higher than a society's fixed asset investment, Zhang said.