Workers work on an optical fiber production line at a communications equipment factory in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. (May 15, 2020)

WASHINGTON — 

China's economy is expected to exceed 120 trillion yuan ($17.2 trillion) this year, state media said Saturday, citing a senior Communist Party official.

The world's second-largest economy has been weighed down by supply disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic, weak domestic and foreign demand, and a housing downturn.

Chinese state media CCTV quoted Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the Communist Party's Central Financial and Economic Office, as saying: "There is a gap between this year's economic growth and the expected target at the beginning of the year, but many other indicators are well completed. Some future-oriented structural indicators include: With outstanding performance, it is estimated that the total economic volume this year will exceed 120 trillion yuan."

Han Wenxiu expects China's total economic output to exceed 120 trillion yuan in 2022, according to Reuters calculations of official Chinese data.

In the first three quarters of this year, China's economy grew by only 3%. Many economists expect China to remain at that level for the year, well below the official target of "around 5.5 percent".

"The deteriorating COVID-19 situation and the high-frequency data so far this month point to further weakness in December," Goldman Sachs analysts said in a note Friday.

The CCP held a two-day Central Economic Work Conference this week and formulated five key tasks for China's economic work next year: "Stability is at the top of the list, making progress while maintaining stability", "Steady growth", "Stable employment", "Price stabilization", and at the same time proposed to prevent and resolve "major risks" and promote the overall improvement of economic operation.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has spread explosively in some provinces and cities in China recently, and the people infected with the virus are miserable, mourning and complaining. A model built by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in the United States predicts that the sudden lifting of strict restrictions on the new coronavirus epidemic in China could lead to a surge in cases, with more than 1 million people by 2023 die.

However, in the face of the huge impact of the epidemic on people's lives, work and health, CCP officials still said that China's "economic operation is expected to recover in general" next year. However, Han Wenxiu warned that the overall improvement in economic operation "is not automatically generated. , not 'pie in the sky', must pay hard work.".