China is steady, we are capable of achieving main targets says Premier

China, the world's second largest economy, is capable of achieving its full-year growth target and controlling systematic risks despite challenges,announced Premier Li Keqiang on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Dalian, China.

Beijing was targeting economic growth of around 6.5% in 2017- the slowest in 26 years - compared with the 6.7% pace delivered in 2016, the latter of which was coined "a big contribution to the global economy" at the WEF by Klaus Schwab, founder of the WEF.

In the speech, Li further touted the Chinese economy's steadiness in the second quarter, as domestic demand became a key pillar for the expansion of the world's second-largest economy and added that maintaining medium to high-speed long-term growth will not be easy.

"China's economy in the second-quarter maintained the first-quarter's steady and improving momentum. We are fully capable of achieving the main economic targets for the full year," Li said.

Moreover, Li stated that "currently, China also faces many difficulties and challenges, but we are fully prepared."

Meanwhile, Schwab pointed towards the fact that in the past 12 months China had shown "even more its capability to become a leader in the force industrial revolution" and that "innovation and mass entrepreneurship" were key to success in this new economy.

According to official data, China's economy grew at a 6.9% clip during the first quarter and Beijing was not expected to tighten policy ahead of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party in the autumn.

Yet authorities faced a difficuly balancing act, needing to curb unproductive investment and overcapacity in many industries, particularly in the state-owned sector.

Thus, analysts were carefully monitoring the impact which the government's drive against 'shadow-lending' might have on the property sector, even as they kept a wary eye on China's rising levels of debt.

On 15 June, analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote: "The bottom line here is that in many ways, lower growth in China is better growth. But equity markets are unlikely to reflect this in the near term, as liquidity conditions tighten and financial stress increases.

"Today's money data confirm that household debt growth appears to be insufficient to offset the combined forces of deleveraging, macroprudential policy tightening and currency intervention."