The economic growth rate of Liaoning in China’s struggling north-east sank below zero in the first quarter, according to the local statistics bureau, making it the first province to register negative growth in seven years thanks to a severe downturn in China’s energy and heavy industry sectors.

China’s national growth clocked in at an annual rate of 6.7 per cent in the first quarter, but that masks sharp discrepancies between provinces reliant on heavy industry, mining or oil and the southern and eastern regions with more diversified economies.

Liaoning, one of two provinces yet to report gross domestic product figures for the first quarter, was expected to perform poorly. The downturn in coal and oil prices has hit hard in the north-east, formerly known as Manchuria. The largest economy among the three northeastern provinces, Liaoning boasts the manufacturing and high-tech city of Dalian but is also home to large and struggling steel mills.

Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald reported this week that the province would book a 1.3 per cent contraction in real GDP for the quarter, a figure subsequently integrated into figures published by data provider CEIC. A Liaoning statistics bureau official confirmed that the figure was “basically correct” when contacted by the Financial Times but said the data had not yet been published, pending approval from senior provincial officials.

Liaoning’s performance is politically significant because Chinese premier Li Keqiang is affiliated with an economic revival in the rust belt north-east after a severe downturn following reforms to state-owned heavy industry in the late 1990s. His policy, which included state-funded housing projects designed to replace decrepit neighbourhoods of SOE worker housing, fuelled a construction boom but did not fundamentally alter the region’s reliance on traditional industries.