00:00Steve, I mean, we know that the numbers were actually what topped Alan's estimates.
00:05That's pretty resilient.
00:07Yeah, so resilience is the key here because they've built a lot of their energy resilience into it,
00:12the economy and the outlook, and preventing those kind of shocks,
00:17unforeseen shocks that are now a reality by, you know,
00:20relying a much larger proportion of their energy mix on renewables
00:24and also a tried-and-true decades-old reliance on coal
00:28and not be as reliant on oil and gas, of course,
00:33which has been severely hampered.
00:36There are imports that go through the Strait of Hormuz because of the war in Iran.
00:40So at least in the first quarter, the economy proved to be quite resilient
00:45and also the Chinese continue to rely on that export machine,
00:49even though the export growth kind of dipped back a bit in March,
00:53where imports were considerably higher.
00:55We still saw double-digit gains in export growth in the first quarter of this year.
01:01So they're leaning on that.
01:02So GDP growth came in above the consensus estimate of 4.8% growth in the first quarter at 5%,
01:09which, by the way, is at the high end of their more recently stated goal for the year
01:14of between 4.5% to 5%.
01:17And more significantly, it beat the nadir, the post-COVID nadir that we saw in the fourth quarter
01:23of just 4.5% growth.
01:26Steve, any signs of stress at all?
01:30Oh, absolutely.
01:31The uncertainty of what's happening in the Middle East is paramount to the Chinese.
01:36That's why Xi Jinping is meeting with the foreign minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, this week.
01:42He's meeting with the Vietnamese new president, who's the party chief there.
01:47He's meeting with, just yesterday, in the Great Hall of the People,
01:51with the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez.
01:55He is rolling out the red carpet to kind of shore up diplomatic relations around the world
02:01at a time of great uncertainty geopolitically and on the trade front
02:06and trying to portray China as the reliable partner in a very fractured geopolitical environment.
02:13So there are lots of uncertainties.
02:15One thing the Chinese are very good at, Haslinda, is sort of building in this resilience
02:20and preparing for the worst-case scenario.
02:22And that's where they're seeing that resilience pay off in the GDP growth.
02:26But that's not going to last forever.
02:28If the war goes on ad infinitum, all bets are off
02:32and they're going to have to build more resilience in.
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