China's economy grew 6.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, official data showed on Wednesday, above expectations and steady from the previous quarter, helped by sharply higher factory production. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected growth to slow slightly to 6.3 percent in the January-March quarter, the slowest pace in at least 27 years. China's trading partners and investors are closely watching for signs of improvement in its economy amid growing worries about sputtering global growth. Initial March readings had offered some encouragement that the economy was starting to turn the corner after a ... (full story)

The bid tone around the Aussie dollar seems to have strengthened in response to the better-than-expected China data dump. As of writing, the AUD/USD pair is trading at a session high of 0.7200, having added more than 25 pips in the last few minutes. The official data released at 02:00 GMT showed the world's second-largest economy expanded at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent in three months to March 2019, beating the expected growth rate of 6.3 percent, having expanded 6.4 percent in the final quarter of 2018. An uptick in the growth rate will likely strengthen the narrative that China's economy has bottomed out. As ... (full story)

AUD/JPY is taking the bids around 80.60 during early Wednesday. The pair recently surged after China released headline economic data with industrial production registering a big increase. While gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter (Q1) of 2019 matched consensus of 1.4% on QoQ basis and remained unchanged at 6.4% on a yearly basis, the YoY growth of March month industrial production beat 5.9% consensus with a big +8.5% mark. Retail Sales also crossed expectations concerning 8.4% rise with an 8.7% increase on YoY basis during March. The quote earlier shed some gains as Japan’s March month total ... (full story)

China’s economy grew 6.4 per cent in the first quarter compared to a year earlier, the joint-slowest growth rate since quarterly growth records began to be published 27 years ago, according to official figures released on Wednesday, but beating analysts’ expectations. This beat the median forecast of a Bloomberg survey of economists, which predicted gross domestic product (GDP) growth would slow to 6.3 per cent for the quarter. However, it falls within the government’s growth target range of between 6.0 and 6.5 per cent for this year. Last year the economy grew at 6.6 per cent. GDP growth matches the fourth quarter ... (full story)