Beijing sees GDP increase 5.5 percent

The Chinese capital's GDP reached 2.06 trillion yuan ($285.74 billion) in the first half of the year, with year-on-year growth of 5.5 percent, and authorities expect the upward trend to continue in the future.

"Beijing will continue to make efforts to accelerate economic recovery and high-quality development," Beijing statistics bureau spokeswoman Zhu Yannan said at a news conference on Wednesday.

"The overall economic recovery and development of the city is on a positive trend with improved efficiency."

The city government will maintain stable prices and keep increasing household incomes in order to achieve high-quality growth and new breakthroughs, according to the bureau.

The accumulative value of primary industries reached 4.13 billion yuan in the first half, down 4.6 percent year-on-year. For secondary industries, the accumulative value in that period was 286.64 billion yuan, a 0.3 percent year-on-year decline.

Among those industries, sectors including auto manufacturing and power saw impressive growth during the first six months of the year. The automobile industry grew by 16.1 percent year-on-year, and the power and heat production sector increased by 10.9 percent year-on-year.

The accumulative value of the service industry reached 1.77 trillion yuan, up 6.6 percent year-on-year, the bureau said, which is impressive growth compared with the first quarter.

At the beginning of 2023, Beijing announced an economic growth target of 4.5 percent for the year.

That will help concentrate overall efforts to raise the city's high-quality development, Yin Li, secretary of the Communist Party of China Beijing Municipal Committee, said in a report earlier this year.

The city has been encouraging the private economy by providing support to private enterprises and attracting foreign capital with better services.

Haidian district, the biggest contributor to Beijing's GDP, is expecting to see its GDP growth exceed 6 percent year-on-year during the first half of this year, Li Junjie, the district's head and deputy Party secretary, said on Monday.

Last year, Haidian became the first prefecture-level district in the country to surpass the 1-trillion-yuan GDP threshold, driven by its scientific and technological innovations.

Haidian's 2022 GDP grew 3.5 percent year-on-year, said Wang Zhenrong, spokesperson for the district's bureau of statistics.

The district reported that the total revenue of its high-tech enterprises reached 3.8 trillion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 7.5 percent. The added value of core industries in the digital economy contributed to over 50 percent of Beijing's GDP.

In the last year, high-tech enterprises in Haidian spent 203.83 billion yuan in scientific research and development, increasing by 7.8 percent and representing 52.7 percent of the capital's scientific R&D spending.

City data show Beijing's GDP exceeding 3 trillion yuan for the first time in 2018 and reaching 4 trillion yuan in 2021.