BEIJING — China's economy grew 4.5% in the third quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday, beating forecasts and picking up from a more-than-three-year low as a surge in technology exports made up for weak spending at home and a deepening property slump.

The figure topped the 4.4% expected in a Reuters poll and improved on the 4.3% recorded in the April-to-June quarter, which was the slowest pace since the end of 2022. On a quarterly basis, output rose 1.2%, ahead of the 1.1% forecast and up from 0.9% in the second quarter, Reuters reported.

The result keeps Beijing on course for its annual growth target of 4.5% to 5% and eases pressure on policymakers to launch a large stimulus package before the end of the year. It also shows how dependent the world's second-largest economy has become on foreign demand at a time when trade frictions with Europe are rising.

Gross domestic product for the first nine months totalled 107.1 trillion yuan, up 4.6% from a year earlier and within the target range, according to Seoul Economic Daily. Growth was 5.0% in the first quarter before slowing in the second.

Exports rose more than 16% in the first three quarters, driven largely by demand for semiconductors and other technology goods linked to the global AI boom, Al Jazeera reported. China's trade surplus for January to September reached $938.11 billion, putting it on track to exceed last year's record of about $1.19 trillion, according to Seoul Economic Daily.

September's activity data were firmer than expected. Industrial output rose 5.5% from a year earlier, in line with forecasts and up from 5.2% in August, its fastest pace since March. Retail sales grew 1.1%, beating the 0.6% forecast and accelerating from 0.4% in August, according to Reuters.

High-tech manufacturing output climbed 14.3% in the first nine months and equipment manufacturing 10.2%, Seoul Economic Daily reported. The urban unemployment rate stood at 5.2% in September, according to Kaohoon International.

Investment told a different story. Fixed-asset investment fell 7.2% in January to September from a year earlier, unchanged from the pace through August. Property development investment dropped 20.6% over the same period, worse than the 19.9% decline recorded through August, Reuters reported. Infrastructure investment was down 4.2%.

"Growth is export- and state-led; domestic demand is not yet self-sustaining, and the property sector shows no floor," Andy Ji, Asian FX and rates analyst at ITC Markets in Shanghai, told Reuters.

Ji said the stronger-than-expected GDP and retail figures "reduce the urgency for immediate broad-based easing."

The People's Bank of China has left its policy rate unchanged since a cut in May 2025, and most economists expect benchmark lending rates to stay put for the rest of the year, with fiscal policy doing most of the work, according to Reuters and Kaohoon International. Authorities have this year released 550 billion yuan of unspent government debt quotas to local governments and tapped an 800 billion yuan financing programme for infrastructure, Kaohoon reported.

Zhiguo He, a finance professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, said the outcome was close to what the government wanted. "I expect Beijing is getting 4.5 percent as wanted," he told Al Jazeera. "A managed slow slowdown is the best Beijing can hope for."

He added that "real estate is still shrinking," which he described as a good outcome from Beijing's perspective, and said the government would be wary of continued reliance on export-driven growth.

That reliance carries risks. A cooling in the AI investment cycle could reduce demand for Chinese technology exports, Reuters reported, and a planned European Union deal to curb Chinese hybrid-vehicle shipments could weigh on one of the country's fastest-growing export industries.

The Communist Party's 2026 target of 4.5% to 5% would be among the slowest expansions in decades outside the pandemic years, Al Jazeera reported.

Economists polled by Reuters expect growth to slow to 4.5% for 2026 as a whole, from 5.0% in 2025, and to 4.4% in 2027. Reaching the top of this year's range would require a strong fourth quarter, Reuters reported, and the statistics bureau's next monthly release, covering October, will show whether September's pickup in retail sales has held.