China's Economic Growth Continues to Slow
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - China's economy registered a flat growth of 7.7 percent last year, maintaining for the second year its slowest expansion in more than a decade as the government warned of "deep-rooted problems" including a mountain of local authority debt.
Gross domestic product (GDP) expansion for the October-December quarter also came in at 7.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, slowing from 7.8 percent in the previous three months.
The 2013 GDP figure was the same as that for 2012, which was the worst rate of growth since 1999. It was still higher than the government's growth target for the year, which was 7.5 percent.
"Generally speaking China's economy showed good momentum of stable and moderate growth in 2013, which is (a) hard-earned achievement," NBS chief Ma Jiantang told reporters.
"However, we should keep in mind that the deep-rooted problems built up over time are yet to be solved in what is a critical period for China's economy," Ma said.
Since the 1980s, China has shaken off the lethargy of the Communist command economy with market reforms that brought it years of blistering growth, making its GDP second only to the US and establishing it as the world's biggest trading power in goods.
But the country is widely expected to face slower expansion in the years ahead, Al Jazeera reported.
Its leaders under President Xi Jinping say they are committed to transforming China's growth model to one where consumers and other private actors play the leading role, rather than huge and often wasteful state investment.
