China Records Growth Rate Of Aproximate Nine

A year after suffering one of its worst declines in decades, China's economy has rebounded strongly, recording 8.7 per cent growth in 2009.

The Chinese government's official growth figures for last year, released in January 2010, have exceeded earlier forecasts: the economy registered an unexpectedly high 10.7 per cent growth between October and December, largely on the back of record government spending on infrastructure projects.

China is now on course to overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy, though confirmation of that development will have to wait until next month, when Japan's official GDP figures are released.

But Thursday's data, released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), also reaffirmed what economists say are the country's two most pressing challenges: a widening gap between urban and rural areas, and a continued dependence on growth that is either government-driven or export-led.