China's economy grew at its quickest pace this year between July and September, underpinned by investment, although analysts question if the strength would continue in coming months.
The world's second-largest economy grew 7.8% in the third quarter from a year earlier, in line with expectations, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed today.
So far this year, investment has accounted for more than half of the expansion.
This shows the challenges faced by Beijing in trying to restructure the economy towards consumption, which policymakers expect to provide more sustainable growth in the years ahead.
After slipping in eight of the last 10 quarters, analysts said growth may fall once again in the current October-to-December period.
Exports are expected to soften and authorities may also rein-in credit expansion after inflationpushed to a seven-month high.
After three decades of double-digit expansion fuelled by exports and investment, Beijing is trying to shift or "restructure" the economic mix so that activity is geared much more to consumption.
That means the economy has slowed down compared withprevious years, although sluggish global demand has provided an added weight dragging on China's growth.
For the first nine months, the economy grew 7.7%,keeping it on track to achieve the government's growth target of 7.5% this year, far outperforming other major economies but still the worst performance for China in 23 years.
The fragility of China's latest economic revival comes as no surprise. Exports suffered a surprise fall in September after demand from emerging nations crumbled on volatile financial markets, a trend the government said this week is expected to last.
