Yahoo Finance Live anchors Ines Ferre and Brad Smith discuss China’s full-year GDP growth.

Video Transcript

- Also, staying abroad, let's talk about China. China's economy had one of its worst years in decades in 2022. COVID lockdowns and outbreaks, they weighed on growth. And it's economy grew 3% for the year, falling short of Beijing's target of 5.5%. Now, besides 2020, this was the country's most disappointing showing since 1976. And, really, kind of looking at some of the other metrics here when we talked about the full year GDP growing 3%, that still was above estimates.

However, this was still coming at a time where there was, for much of the year, the zero COVID policy or stance that the company-- or the country, excuse me, was rolling out and continuing to have as one of the kind of blanket policies and that impacting everything from production to the ability for consumers to go out and shop. And so all of that kind of put together, you really think about some of, now, the stimulus mechanisms that they're trying to implement in order to spur or at least reinstate some economic growth in this year, 2023.

- Yeah, and there seems to be two sort of narratives when it comes to China and the reopening. There are those narratives which are bullish, which say that there's pent-up demand. There will be pent up demand for services. You even had Morgan Stanley that recently said that Chinese equities are bullish, that Morgan Stanley sees this year's expansion to 5.7%, where the consensus was 4.8%.

But then you have these, now, sort of warnings about expectations for this year that perhaps it'll be a little bit bumpy, with Moody's analytics saying that China's 2023 will be bumpy. That's because of new COVID waves. That's because of the residential property market that you were just mentioning. Also, weak global demand for its exports.

So while the world is looking at China to sort of lift up the world economy as it reopens, China also has-- there's a little difference of sort of a narrative on what's-- how it's that reopening will take place, how bullish it will be for this year for China.

- Well, you've got some investors that are bullish perhaps on that rebound. Ryan Cohen taking a look under the hood at Alibaba and really saying, you know what, I'm going to take a significant position within Alibaba. And we're tracking BABA shares here this morning as well in the pre-market. Taking a look at here on my screen as you've got them pulled up. They're flat, just barely to the upside there.

But Ryan Cohen and any stake that he takes in some of the more noted e-commerce plays or how he's shifting some companies more towards e-commerce-- thinking of you, GameStop-- that is noteworthy, just given the fact that this is a founder that has been so kind of tech-savvy, looked at for some of the e-commerce diligence that he's brought to the fray for everything from pets all the way now to more gaming and then, additionally, just seeing where there could be an opportunity within Alibaba, especially as that market specifically, perhaps, especially in the equities market, is experiencing more of that outsized downturn or has already been in that downturn and is now banking on perhaps the shares to come back.

But then, additionally-- and take a look at the past three months. Yeah, BABA shares have climbed back by about 56% over that point in time, too.

- Yeah, and anything that Ryan Cohen touches, there's certainly a lot of attention that's paid to it, especially by retail traders.