China’s economy beat expectations in the first quarter, growing 4.8 percent year on year, government data showed on Monday, amid mounting fears of a sharp slowdown due to Beijing’s draconian “zero-Covid” policies and the Ukraine war. The world’s second-largest economy had been forecast to grow 4.4 percent in the January-March period, according to a Reuters poll of economists, up from 4 percent in the last quarter of 2021. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 1.3 percent over the period on a quarter-on-quarter basis. China’s industrial output increased 5.0 percent in March compared to a year earlier, while retail sales shrank 3.5 percent. While boosting Beijing’s prospects of hitting its ambitious target of 5.5 percent growth in 2022, the stronger-than-expected figures only cover a small period of the continuing ultra-strict lockdown in Shanghai, where residents have faced food shortages and factories have suspended operations. Although Chinese President Xi Jinping has ruled out any shift away from the so-called “dynamic zero-Covid” strategy, officials have sounded the alarm about growing risks to the economy as authorities continue to go all out to eliminate the virus.