Official figures show that China's economy grew by 8.7% in 2009, though inflation surged towards the end of the year.
The government said gross domestic product in the world's third-largest economy returned to double-digit annual growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, recording 10.7%. Growth also surpassed the government's target of 8% for the year.
But China's biggest rise in inflation in 13 months underlined the broader challenges of rapid growth, and came as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund warned that the country could face an economic bubble.
Ma Jiantang, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, credited a government stimulus package worth four trillion yuan ($586 billion) with holding up growth in a year when much of the global economy was in crisis.
'We need to prevent the overly fast increases in prices and keep a close eye on the trend in prices,' Ma added at a news conference, but said he believed inflation in 2010 should be 'mild and controllable'.
China's consumer price index rose at an annual rate of 1.9% in December. Authorities are already clamping down on bank lending and hiking borrowing costs to keep a lid on price pressures.
This morning, the People's Bank of China raised the interest rate on its benchmark three-month treasury bills for the second time in two weeks in a bid to curb lending.
China's urban fixed asset investment, a measure of government spending on infrastructure and a key driver of the economy, rose 30.5% in 2009 while overall fixed asset investment rose 30.1%.
Industrial output from China's millions of factories and workshops rose at an annual rate of 18% in the fourth quarter, and 11% for all of 2009. Retail sales jumped 15.5% in 2009.
Earlier this month, the government said exports had surged 17.7% year-on-year in December, snapping a 13-month falling streak, and new loans nearly doubled in 2009 from a year earlier to 9.59 trillion yuan.
