China’s Third-Quarter Economic Growth Slows Sharply to 4.9%

BEIJING—China’s economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter from a year earlier, slowing sharply from the previous quarter’s 7.9% growth rate, as power shortages and supply-chain problems added to the impact from Beijing’s efforts to rein in the real estate and technology sectors.

While many economists expected China’s year-over-year growth to trend lower in the second half of 2021, based in part on statistical comparisons to last year, the scale of the third-quarter slowdown was sharper than expected, falling short of the 5.1% growth forecast by economists polled last week by The Wall Street Journal.