China's premier plays up economic prospects, and first home-grown large cruise ship undocks: 8 stories you might have missed in June

June saw the eyes of the economic world fix upon a northern Chinese city for the World Economic Forum's 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions. Elsewhere, China's first home-grown large cruise liner undocked in a breakthrough for the nation's high-end manufacturing sector.

Also, marriages and exports fell, youth unemployment rose, and China cut various benchmark lending and policy rates in an attempt to shore up the economy.

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Premier Li Qiang played up China's economic prospects and blamed "the West" for calls on "de-risking" in front of 1,500 policy makers and business executives at the start of the World Economic Forum's 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions at the end of June.

Li gave the keynote speech as the three-day 'Summer Davos' forum kicked off in the northern city of Tianjin, and he said China's second-quarter gross domestic product would grow faster than the 4.5 per cent expansion seen in the first three months of the year.

"We are hopeful of reaching our goal of 5 per cent [economic] growth set for the year," he said, adding that China's economy is on track to achieve its targets, while also promising to launch "pragmatic and effective policies" to boost growth.

"China's economic rebound has been in an apparent positive direction since the beginning of this year."

Li admitted that China's domestic development was not yet "balanced", but blamed external factors for causing "enormous destruction" to the world's development.

"We know that there are some in the West calling for 'de-risking' and 'reducing reliance', I think these two phrases are false propositions," he said.

"Even if a certain industry faces supply-chain risks, it should not be up to the government or any organisations to decide what to do. Enterprises are the most sensitive towards economic risks and industrial challenges, so they should have the say."

After the maiden commercial flight of the C919 home-grown passenger jet at the end of May, China's first home-grown large cruise liner left its dock in Shanghai in early June to start sea trials after nearly four years of construction.

Regarded as a breakthrough in the nation's shipbuilding and high-end manufacturing, Adora Magic City is a 135,500-tonne liner built by Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding - a subsidiary of the state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation.

It represents a significant technological advancement for China, being the last type of high-end ship that the country had yet to produce, but some of the parts are still sourced from overseas.

Over 93 per cent of the construction and over 85 per cent of the interior work for the 323-metre-long (1,060-foot) ship has been completed and it is expected to be delivered by the end of the year.

Adora Magic City will make two trial trips in July and August, Waigaoqiao confirmed.

The jobless rate for the 16-24 age group hit a new high of 20.8 per cent in May, up from 20.4 per cent in April, despite the overall urban surveyed jobless rate remaining unchanged from April at 5.2 per cent last month, data released in June showed.

The rate is expected to rise further in July and August, with a record 11.58 million university graduates set to leave campus.

China cut two benchmark lending rates in June, in a sign that Beijing's policymakers were aiming to lower the financial burden on households and also help stabilise the cooling property sector.

The moves by the central bank fuelled further hope of broader economic stimulus to shore up China's headline growth, and stabilise market confidence, after international investment banks slashed their 2023 gross domestic product forecasts for the country.

The five-year loan prime rate (LPR) - which is a reference rate for mortgages - was cut from 4.3 to 4.2 per cent at the June fixing, while the one-year loan prime rate - the medium-term lending benchmark for corporate loans - was cut from 3.65 to 3.55 per cent.

The cuts come after a broad cooling of economic activity in May raised market worries over China's faltering post-coronavirus recovery.

The size of the LPR rate cut was the same as the 10 basis point reduction of the medium-term lending facility announced by the central bank earlier in the month.

China's exports fell by 7.5 per cent in May compared with a year earlier, while imports fell by 4.5 per cent last month, data released in June showed.

Exports fell to US$283.5 billion due to weakening external demand across major trading partners and products, in sharp contrast with an increase of 8.5 per cent in April.

China's weak exports confirmed the need to rely on domestic demand, said Zhang Zhiwei, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, as the global economy slows.

"There is more pressure for the government to boost domestic consumption in the rest of the year, as global demand will likely weaken further in the second half," he said.

Imports, meanwhile, declined to US$217.7 billion after narrowing from a fall of 7.9 per cent in April.

It was confirmed in June that the number of marriages in China plunged to the lowest recorded level since the late 1970s, further illustrating the nation's worsening demographic crisis that includes the first population decline in more than 60 years.

Wedding registrations have declined for nine straight years, and last year's 6.83 million newlyweds were almost half as many as in 2013, when a record high 13.47 million couples tied the knot.

The last time so few people got married in China was more than four decades ago, when 6.37 million couples registered to wed in 1979.

However, China still had fewer than a billion residents back then, compared with 1.41 billion in 2022, which means the marriage rate is considerably lower now.

China's home-grown durians were finally expected to hit the market in June, but it could be years before the vast majority of consumers can get their hands on them, and estimates for projected yields fell sharply in recent months.

In the tropical island province of Hainan, farmers were gearing up for the nation's first large-scale domestic durian harvest after more than four years of cultivation. They are keen to cash in on the growing domestic demand for what has quickly become China's most popular imported fruit.

But Feng Xuejie, director of the Institute of Tropical Fruit Trees at the Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences and a researcher at the Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, expected that Hainan would produce only about 50 tonnes (110,000 pounds) of durian this year. That would account for only about 0.005 per cent of all the durian eaten in China this year.

That new projected yield is also much less than the 2,450-tonne figure that CCTV reported in March.

China will once again see the world's biggest annual outflow of US-dollar millionaires, according to a new forecast for this year that comes amid subdued economic conditions, lingering fallout from the pandemic, and poor relations with some of its major trading partners.

Advisory firm Henley & Partners estimated that mainland China will lose 13,500 high-net-worth individuals - those with investable wealth totalling more than US$1 million - followed by India's 6,500. The UK, in third, will lose 3,200 such individuals, predicts the London-based investment migration consultancy.

In 2022, China lost 10,800 high-net-worth individuals, followed by Russia's 8,500 and India's 7,500.

Among the countries considered most attractive to wealthy individuals, Australia took the report's No 1 spot and is expected to see an inflow of 5,200 high-net-worth individuals in 2023, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 4,500.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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