China will post third-quarter gross domestic product data on Thursday, a day after President Xi Jinping made big promises for the country’s economic future during a pivotal leadership meeting.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics was set to report third-quarter GDP figures at 10 a.m. SIN/HK on Thursday.

Economists polled by Reuters forecast China to post a modest drop from the second quarter, with GDP to have grown 6.8 percent in the July-September period due to the government’s efforts to cool the property market and cut debt risks. This is a tad lower than the second quarter’s 6.9 percent expansion.

“The long-touted managed slowdown of the Chinese economy seems to have taken shape in the third quarter following a stellar [first-half] performance,” said Ricard Torne, head of economic research at Barcelona-based FocusEconomics.

Data have shown faster-than-expected deceleration in economic activity due to several factors including a cooling real estate market and a strengthening Chinese yuan, Torne wrote in the recent note.

China’s economy will continue its “managed deceleration” in 2018 as policymakers try to achieve more sustainable growth trajectory, he added. FocusEconomics forecast China’s third-quarter GDP at 6.7 percent.

There may yet be an upside surprise.

On Monday, the People’s Bank of China quoted its governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, as saying the world’s second-largest economy is likely to post growth of 7 percent in the second half of the year thanks to rapid household spending. First half GDP growth was 6.9 percent.

Source: cnbc china
Here comes Chinese GDP data at a pivotal time for the country