The World Bank on Tuesday raised its 2025 growth forecast for China to 4.8%, up from its April estimate of 4%, signaling renewed optimism for the world’s second-largest economy despite an increasingly turbulent global trade environment fueled by U.S. tariffs.

According to CNBC, the revised outlook brings the projection closer to Beijing’s official target of around 5% GDP growth, marking a partial rebound for China’s economy following a year of mixed signals from the property market, consumer spending, and exports.

The Bank’s economists stopped short of citing a single reason for the upgraded forecast but noted that China has benefited from government stimulus and strong export activity, even as those supports are expected to fade in 2026.

Trade tensions between Beijing and Washington have remained a central risk factor. In April, the U.S. sharply increased tariffs on Chinese imports to over 100%, the highest since the height of the 2018–2019 trade war. The two countries later reached a temporary truce, now set to last until mid-November. Tariffs currently stand at an average of 57.6% — more than double their level at the start of the year — underscoring continued friction in trade relations under President Donald Trump’s protectionist economic agenda.

The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the tariffs as necessary to “rebalance global trade,” but they have also rattled markets and prompted companies across Asia to adjust supply chains. Some American firms, including Apple, had earlier expanded manufacturing operations in India to hedge against the risks of overreliance on China. However, as the tariffs drag on, uncertainty continues to cloud global investment sentiment, weighing on cross-border business flows throughout Asia.

In response, China intensified stimulus measures in late 2024, introducing consumer trade-in programs and supporting industrial production. These policies helped buoy retail and export activity through much of 2025. Exports to Southeast Asia and Europe climbed steadily, offsetting sharp declines in shipments to the United States. Analysts say that part of the export strength also came from companies rushing to fulfill orders ahead of tariff increases.

Still, the World Bank cautioned that the momentum may not last. It projects that China’s GDP growth will slow to 4.2% in 2026 as export gains ease and the government tapers its stimulus to rein in public debt. The country’s real estate sector remains a drag, with investment plunging 12.9% in the first eight months of the year.

Retail sales also showed sluggish recovery, rising just 3.4% year-on-year in August, missing analysts’ expectations. Early data from the eight-day “Golden Week” holiday suggest weak consumer spending. Nomura’s Chief China Economist, Ting Lu, noted that while passenger trips rose 5.4% year-on-year, the pace was much slower than during the May holiday season.

“Actual consumption growth could be even weaker than the data suggest,” Lu said, citing calendar effects and slowing household sentiment.

The World Bank’s report further highlighted China’s structural challenges, including youth unemployment — with one in seven young people jobless — an aging population, and slower productivity growth compared to other major economies. It also noted that Chinese startups generate fewer jobs relative to their U.S. counterparts, largely due to the dominance of state-owned enterprises.

According to the Bank’s estimates, a 1 percentage point decline in China’s GDP can reduce growth in the rest of developing East Asia and the Pacific by 0.3 percentage points. With China’s upgraded projection, the region’s overall growth outlook has been lifted to 4.8% in 2025, up from 4% previously forecast.

Globally, however, the World Bank remains cautious. In June, it lowered its 2025 world growth forecast to 2.3%, citing trade uncertainty and geopolitical tensions, warning that the slowdown would mark the weakest expansion since the 2008 financial crisis outside of global recessions.

China’s near-term prospects may have improved, but with Trump’s tariffs still in place and global trade increasingly fragmented, economists say Beijing faces the daunting task of sustaining growth while rebalancing its economy toward domestic consumption and innovation-driven sectors.

Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of the hedge fund giant Citadel, highlighted a significant shift in investor behavior during a Bloomberg interview.

He described how individuals and institutions are increasingly allocating capital to gold, silver, and Bitcoin as part of what’s being called the “debasement trade”—a strategy to hedge against the erosion of the U.S. dollar’s value due to inflation, excessive money printing, and rising sovereign debt risks.

This trend, Griffin noted, reflects broader efforts to “de-dollarize” portfolios and mitigate exposure to U.S. fiscal uncertainties, including an ongoing government shutdown and expectations of Federal Reserve rate cuts.

Griffin attributed the move to several interconnected factors: The U.S. dollar has declined about 10% year-to-date in 2025, its worst performance in decades, amid inflation running above the Fed’s 2% target and forecasts suggesting it will persist into 2026.

He likened the U.S. economy to being on a “sugar high” from recession-level stimulus measures, fueling asset inflation across markets like stocks, gold, and crypto—despite no actual recession.

With U.S. debt levels soaring and political gridlock (e.g., the shutdown), investors are seeking “non-sovereign” assets that aren’t tied to government promises.

Griffin called this dynamic “really concerning,” as it signals eroding global confidence in the dollar as the ultimate safe haven. This strategy has propelled gold, silver, and Bitcoin to new heights in 2025, with unusual correlations emerging between them and even traditional equities like the S&P 500.

Investors are increasingly viewing gold as a safer store of value than the dollar, with portfolios being “de-risked” against U.S. government debt and fiscal policies. Griffin noted that this includes a surge in crypto assets like Bitcoin, whose “unbelievable” appreciation underscores the trend.

He likened the U.S. economy to being on a “sugar high,” propped up by recession-like stimulus measures amid persistent inflation currently above the Fed’s 2% target and projected at 2-3% next year. Despite booming equities driven by AI and high-performance computing, underlying risks like a weakening dollar are being masked.

Griffin warned that this could erode global confidence in the U.S. as a financial hub, potentially accelerating moves by countries to settle trade in local currencies or digital assets. He also expressed concerns over policies like higher H-1B visa fees, which might deter international talent in STEM fields from coming to the U.S.

Gold and Bitcoin, in particular, have never before been the top two performing asset classes year-to-date, underscoring the novelty of this trade. Analysts like Yan Lee from Bitget describe them as “dual debasement trades,” emphasizing their scarcity and independence from central banks.

Wall Street echoes this: Goldman Sachs recently forecasted even higher gold prices, and ETF inflows into Bitcoin have accelerated, with firms like MicroStrategy pausing buys after amassing $79B in holdings.

While Griffin views this as a red flag for U.S. economic health, it validates Bitcoin’s maturation as a mainstream hedge—once dismissed by traditional finance, now grouped with gold and silver.

If the government shutdown drags on Polymarket odds favor it extending past October 15, or if inflation data disappoints, these assets could rally further, tightening their correlation and pressuring the dollar more.

For investors, it’s a reminder that in times of fiat uncertainty, “hard money” alternatives—physical or digital—are gaining traction as portfolio diversifiers.

Across the arc of human progress, I have divided the world economic history into three fundamental eras: the Invention Society, the Innovation Society, and the Accelerated Society. The Invention Society was when humankind discovered the building blocks of science— gravity, electromagnetism, and calculus—yet lacked the ability to commercialize them. The Innovation Society took those inventions and converted them into products—light bulbs, automobiles, vaccines, and transistors. But now, we are in the Accelerated Society: a civilization where ideas scale instantly through digital fabrics, where code replaces factories, and where intelligence—human or artificial—becomes the new oil.

For Africa, this transition offers the greatest promise in its history. The continent largely missed the full benefits of the industrial and early innovation ages. But in the Accelerated Society, the marginal cost of intelligence is near zero. The same AI algorithm that powers a Silicon Valley startup can also power a logistics company in Lagos or a healthcare agent in Nairobi. The barriers of geography, infrastructure, and even scale have been flattened. What remains is ambition, execution, and knowledge accumulation—three factors that now define competitiveness.

Startups in the Era of Acceleration

Future African startups will not merely copy Western models; they will reframe problems around the continent’s unique realities. A fintech in Lagos will not just digitize payments but reimagine credit scoring for people without formal data footprints. A logistics startup in Kampala will use predictive AI to organize informal transport routes. The startups that win will be those that combine deep local insight with universal intelligence systems.

The Accelerated Society demands that African founders become systems builders, not just app creators. They must design ecosystems—data, APIs, and algorithms—that make AI the engine of inclusion. Just as the Industrial Revolution rewarded those who owned steam and steel, the Accelerated Society will reward those who own intelligence pipelines: the datasets, domain expertise, and adaptive AI models built from Africa’s context.

AI as Africa’s Development Shortcut

Artificial Intelligence represents Africa’s most potent development shortcut. In the past, building national capacity required decades of industrial policy. Today, an AI-trained system can offer near-human diagnostic support to a rural doctor in Sokoto or recommend precision fertilizers to a farmer in Eldoret. This is the power of exponential systems: they compress time, democratize capability, and compound learning.

But to extract this dividend, Africa must build local AI capacity. That means universities that teach prompt engineering, startups that train models on African languages, and governments that deploy AI to predict floods, manage traffic, and optimize public finance. The AI age is not just about technology; it is about institutional redesign, where data becomes a national asset, and intelligence becomes a public utility.

The Future: From Adoption to Creation

In the coming decade, the defining African startups will not be those that merely use AI but those that create AI tuned to local nuances—voice agents that understand Pidgin and Swahili, credit models trained on market transaction data, and educational tutors that teach mathematics through local examples. These are not dreams; they are blueprints for AI-enabled prosperity.

My message is simple: while the West leads in invention and Asia perfects innovation, Africa’s chance lies in acceleration. By leaping over industrial bottlenecks and harnessing AI as the great equalizer, the continent can transform from consumer to creator, from imitator to innovator. The future startup in Africa will not just chase profit; it will code development itself.