The Chinese economy growth slowed down during the second quarter this year, China's National Bureau of Statistics revealed on Thursday, fuelling fears that the world's third largest economy may cut down on commodity imports.
"The (Chinese) economy increased 10.3 per cent year on year in the second quarter, which was lower than the 11.9 per cent growth in the first", China's National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Sheng Laiyun told a news conference.
Overall, China's economy expanded at a rate of 11.1 percent on year-on-year basis during the first half of 2010.
This was 3.7 percentage points higher than the growth during the same period last year, when China was still wrestling with the global financial crisis.
The slow growth in the second quarter this year is attributed to the slow easing of $586 billion stimulus it announced to insulate Chinese economy from the world financial crisis.
Also, a series of measures including cutting down on bank lending, adopted by the Chinese government to tame the domestic property bubble, also factor in the slowed pace of growth.
However, Sheng argued the slow down will have a positive impact on the country's growth.
"The slowdown in the growth rate will benefit the economy because it will prevent it from growing too fast and being overheated", he said.
Also, he held, that despite the decline, the economy was growing within the governments target range.
The lower growth rate would back Chinas efforts to boost domestic consumption and reduce reliance on exports and foreign investments.
He said the income of China's urban and rural residents continued to increase. In the first half of the year, per-capita disposable income for urban people reached 9,757 yuan ($1,428.55) up 10.2 per cent year on year.
After deducting inflation, though, actual growth was 7.5 percent, Sheng said. Per-capita cash income for rural residents was 3,078 yuan in the first half of the year, which after deducting inflation, showed a growth of 9.5 per cent.
China's industrial value-added output grew by 17.6 percent during the first half of the year.
This was 10.6 percentage points higher than the industrial value-added output in the correpsonding period the previous year.
