China is expected to record little to no growth this year after suffering an economic contraction in the first quarter for the first time since the Cultural Revolution.

The world’s second-biggest economy shrank 6.8pc in the three months to March compared with the same period last year as factories and shops closed to reduce the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

It was China's worst performance since 1967 and a blow to the Communist Party's pledge of continued prosperity in exchange for untrammelled political power.

Mao Shengyong, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, said the second quarter was expected to be much better than in the first but weak consumer spending and factory activity pointed to a longer recovery.

Economists at Oxford Economics, UBS and Nomura forecast that although the worst is behind China in terms of containing the outbreak, lingering fears of the virus would weigh on growth for the rest of the year.

Zhu Zhenxin, an economist at the Rushi Finance Institute in Beijing, said: “I don't think we will see a real recovery until the fourth quarter or the end of the year.”

Analysts in China and abroad have long harboured doubts about the accuracy of the official data, suspecting that the numbers are massaged for political reasons.

But Goldman Sachs noted “the decision to publish something much lower than any previous quarterly GDP reading represents marked progress which will likely enhance the credibility of official statistics”.