China on Wednesday said its economy is still a major engine for the world's economic growth, in rebuke to claims that a slowing Chinese growth might pose risks to the global economy.

Speaking at a regular press briefing in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said China's economy keeps recovering and moves towards improvement generally.

China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.5 percent year on year in the first half of 2023, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed in July.

The figure was "significantly" higher than the 3 percent, by which China's GDP grew for 2022, Wang said. It was also higher than China's average annual growth rate of 4.5 percent during the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more than three percentage points higher than America's GDP growth rate in the first half of the year, he said.

In its latest World Economic Outlook Report, the International Monetary Fund said last month that China's economy was forecast to grow by 5.2 percent for 2023, and would contribute a third of global growth this year, according to Wang.

"China has been steadily advancing the high-quality development of economy, with bright spots in both quality and quantity," he said.

Consumption has driven the country's economic growth with a "significantly obvious" result, said Wang.

The contribution rate of domestic demand to China's economic growth reached 110.8 percent in the first six months of the year, a year-on-year increase of 59.4 percentage points, he said. The contribution rate of final consumption hit 77.2 percent, soaring 46.4 percentage points, he added.

(Cover: File of the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai, east China, May 19, 2021. /CFP)