Lowest GDP Growth in 50 Years Projected for East Asia

A new release by the World Bank paints a bleak picture of GDP growth in developing East Asia-Pacific. In 2024, the region is projected to grow by only 4.5 percent, which would be the worst result outside of dire crises and recessions in almost 50 years. The release names persistent domestic difficulties in China - high debt, the weak property sector and an aging society - as reasons why average growth in the region would be this low despite external factors improving. Growth in the country was put even lower at 4.4 percent in 2024.

As data aggregated by the Financial Times shows, the last time GDP growth would have been this low with the exception of acute crisis years was 1976. It was also below 4.5 percent in 2020, 2022 and 1998, the year of the Asian financial crisis. The Great Recession of 2008/2009 caused a slump in the region, but only to around 8 percent, down from more than 12 percent in 2007. Previous to 1980, growth in developing East Asia-Pacific experienced huge swings, moving between 3 and 13 percent in the 1970s and -1.4 and 11 percent in the 1960s.

Both decades were marked by unrest and upheaval in the region. 1976 was the year Mao Zedong died, ushering a new era in China, and was also the first year after the Vietnam War ended. 1967, the year with the lowest recorded GDP growth in the region by the World Bank, saw the height of the U.S. ground offensive in Vietnam, the seizure of power during the Chinese cultural revolution and anti-Chinese riots in Burma with tens of thousands of refugees.