Benchmark

China's Growth Engines Are Slowly Converging

  • Southwest and Northwest regions grew fastest in 2012-2016
  • Growth deceleration in the Northeastern rustbelt the fastest

Women use mobile phones while sitting on a bench in the Gongbei district of Zhuhai, Guangdong province, China.

Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
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Growth in China’s economy has long centered on the coast, where Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta form some of the world’s most productive regions on their own.

But now that tide of internal migration that drew hundreds of millions of workers from the farm to factory is shifting, and lifting the economic prospects of the country’s interior.