China;s Economic Woes

China's economic growth rate slowed to a near 30-year low in the third quarter, hurting the income of its poorest.

Gan Xiaoge, an office cleaner, finds herself among the hundreds of millions of Chinese who are starting to feel the pinch.

"Pork prices have risen so much in recent months and soon I won't be able to afford meat any more. The landlord has also raised my rent from 500 yuan ($71) to 800 yuan ($114), then 1,000 yuan ($142) in three months," Gan told Al Jazeera. "There's no protection for us from rent hikes and landlords can always just find another tenant easily. The salary in Beijing is barely enough to earn a living."

China's official urban unemployment has hovered near or below the four percent mark for years but anecdotal evidence points to a growing number of manufacturing companies laying off staff as they suffer from the drop in overseas orders caused by the trade war with the US. But the Chinese economy had been slowing down even before the trade war began last year. One reason for the deceleration was Beijing's attempt to reduce debts and social inequality that had worsened as the government pursued an export-oriented strategy to create world-beating, low-cost industries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is trying to reverse some of those adverse side effects by reducing China's reliance on exports and making domestic consumers the main engine for growth. Some analysts say that strategy has yet to bear fruit. Chinese people have traditionally been among the most frugal, with savings rates far higher than those of citizens of most other countries. But from a peak in 2010, household savings as a percentage of disposable income has been on a slow, but steady, decline, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Savings has declined as the government has encouraged more domestic consumption to reduce China's reliance on exports

"Beijing is struggling to rebalance growth towards consumer spending, which suggests that any stimulus efforts will remain focused on investment," Diana Choyleva, chief economist at Enodo Economics, wrote in a research note. "But ultimately, Xi Jinping seems prepared to accept much weaker growth. He cares more about reducing inequality and disarming its threat to the Chinese Communist Party's power than about growth and financial markets," Choyleva added.

But slowing growth is just one reason for the squeeze on people's incomes. The African swine fever outbreak, which has forced authorities to cull millions of hogs and which has decimated the supply of pork meat, has led to rapid increases in the price of the commodity. Overall, consumer prices rose three percent from a year earlier in September, the fastest increase in nearly six years,. This spike was largely driven by the increase in pork prices.

Household debt has increased considerably . The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the total debt of Chinese households stood at 50.3 percent of GDP as of June 2018, above the emerging market average and 32 percentage points higher than it stood a decade earlier.

The IMF says the increase raises "concerns about whether further debt increases could lead to significant adverse effects on growth and financial stability".

And it's not just households that have been accumulating debt. The central and provincial governments have been, too. The government has reduced taxes to allow people to spend more to stimulate growth, but a side effect has been to put a strain on the finances of local government revenues, forcing them to increase borrowings.