China’s gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2016 to reach 15.9 trillion yuan. The growth was lower than the previous quarter’s 6.8 percent, which was already the lowest quarterly rate since the global financial crisis in 2008.

China's gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2016 to reach 15.9 trillion yuan.

Sheng Laiyun, spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, said while the economy stabilized in the opening quarter of 2016, China could not underestimate the challenges ahead. 

“As a whole, the national economy in the first quarter of 2016 enjoyed a sound development, thanks to a series of policies and measures adopted by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. Positive changes have been shown in major economic indicators,” Sheng said. 

“But we also have to notice that our country is still at the stage of transforming and upgrading. The pain of reform and the downward pressure of the economy can not be ignored.”

New credit, industrial output, fixed-asset investment and retail sales all picked up in March and beat forecasts. Property-development investment led the gains by climbing more than six percent from a year earlier, while new property construction jumped almost 20 percent.

Meanwhile, home sales by area surged by more than a third. Value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, expanded by nearly six percent year-on-year in the first quarter, accelerating in March from the 5.4-percent increase in the January-February period. China’s retail sales of consumer goods also made a better-than-expected 10.3 percent increase in the first quarter.