China's economic growth slowed further to 7.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2014, showing signs of waning momentum despite reforms, innovation and restructuring by the Chinese leadership to revitalise the world's second largest economy.
The first-quarter growth exceeded market estimates of 7.3 per cent, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday. However, this is the slowest pace at which the Chinese economy has grown in the past 18 months after it registered a 7.4 per cent growth in the third quarter of 2012.
The growth slowed compared to the 7.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2013. The figure still far outperformed the 6.6-percent growth in the first quarter of 2009, when the global financial crisis wreaked havoc, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.