Growth momentum even stronger with reforms

Early this year, China watchers expressed concerns that the country's economy might start to weaken in the second quarter. However, the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics show such concerns were unfounded, and the world's second-largest economy remains resilient.

The economy expanded by 6.9 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the same as in the first quarter, according to the figures released by the NBS on Monday. Even more encouraging, key indicators, such as industrial output and consumption, reveal that improvements are being made in adjusting the country's economic structure.

Investment in high-tech industries, for example, increased by 21.5 percent, 12.9 percentage points higher than overall investment growth, while retail sales of consumer goods grew 10.4 percent year-on-year, up from 10 percent in the first quarter. And the service sector, which already accounts for 54.1 percent of the overall economy, expanded 7.7 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year. According to the NBS, domestic consumption now accounts for 63.4 percent of GDP growth, which highlights the progress China is making in its bid to make innovation and domestic demand the drivers of economic growth.