China on Wednesday said its economy grew a forecast-beating 5.4 percent in the first quarter as exporters rushed to get goods out of factory gates ahead of swingeing new US tariffs.

Beijing and Washington are locked in a fast-moving, high-stakes game of brinkmanship since US President Donald Trump launched a global tariff assault that has particularly targeted Chinese imports.

Tit-for-tat exchanges have seen US levies imposed on China rise to 145 percent, and Beijing setting a retaliatory 125 percent toll on US imports.

Official data Wednesday offered a first glimpse into how those trade war fears are affecting the Asian giant’s fragile recovery, which was already feeling the pressure of persistently low consumption and a property market debt crisis.

Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that “according to preliminary estimates, the gross domestic product in the first quarter… (was) up by 5.4 percent year on year at constant prices”.

That was above the 5.1 percent predicted by analysts polled by AFP ahead of the data release.

Industrial output also soared 6.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, up from 5.7 percent in the final three months of 2024.

And retail sales, a key gauge of consumer demand, climbed 4.6 percent year-on-year, the NBS said.

But Beijing warned the global economic environment was becoming more “complex and severe” and that more was needed to boost growth and consumption.

“The foundation for sustained economic recovery and growth is yet to be consolidated,” the NBS said, adding there was a need for “more proactive and effective macro policies”. 

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