China's economy returned to growth in the second quarter after a deep slump at the start of the year, but unexpected weakness in domestic consumption underscored the need for more policy support to bolster the recovery after the shock of the coronavirus crisis.To get more China economy news, you can visit shine news official website.

Asian share markets and the Chinese yuan fell, partly reflecting the broad challenges facing the world's second-largest economy as it grapples with the double-whammy of the pandemic and heightened tensions with the United States over trade, technology and geopolitics.

Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 3.2% in the second-quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday, faster than the 2.5% forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll, as lockdown measures ended and policymakers ramped up stimulus to combat the virus-led downturn.The bounce was still the weakest expansion on record, and followed a steep 6.8% slump in the first quarter, the worst downturn since at least the early 1990s.

"As we previously highlighted, policy support is still needed despite recovering growth momentum," Betty Wang, ANZ bank's senior China economist.

"The possibility of resurgences in local COVID-19 cases, global economic uncertainty and the deteriorating China-U.S. relationship all pose downside risks to China's H2 growth outlook," Wang said.

Those risks were partly reflected in separate retail data that showed Chinese consumers kept their wallets tightly shut, pointing to a bumpy outlook at home and overseas, as many countries continue to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic - led by surging infections in the United States.

Though June indicators and GDP numbers largely beat expectations, Rodrigo Catril, a foreign exchange strategist at NAB in Sydney, said they also revealed "the China consumer remains behind in terms of the recovery story."

"It's very much a story of government stimulus-led recovery, which is very much focused on the industrial side. The consumer remains very cautious. That cautiousness is something the market is looking at in terms of countries where the consumer plays a bigger role, so that's obviously relevant for the U.S. as well."

Retail sales were down 1.8% on-year in June - the fifth straight month of decline and much worse than a predicted 0.3% growth, after a 2.8% drop in May.

Domestic job losses have been one of the worries for consumers, as many businesses struggled to stay in the black.

Wanda Film, for example, China's largest cinema chain operator which has more than 600 cinemas, on Tuesday warned of a first half net loss of 1.5-1.6 billion yuan (£170.4-£181.6 million), after the coronavirus kept its cinemas shut for almost the entire period.