China Stocks Frenzy Boosted GDP, Raising Second-Half Doubts
This article is for subscribers only.
China’s frenzied stock market boom -- which soured in the second half of June -- helped drive a surge in financial sector growth that underpinned the economy’s better-than-expected gross domestic product result.
Financial services surged 17.4 percent in the first six months from a year earlier, according to China’s statistics authority, as exchanges and brokerages registered surging revenue amid record trading volume. It was the stand out industry as real estate languished and agriculture grew at about half the overall economy’s pace of 7 percent.