China's economic growth for the first quarter of 2024 has exceeded market expectations. By pursuing high-quality development, and nurturing new quality-driven productive forces, the country has delivered an impressive performance.

Let's take a look at views of experts from home and abroad to China's economic performance and onwards.

China's GDP has grown at a faster rate of 5.3 percent than the 4.6 percent expected by many Western observers. This growth comes as no surprise following the resurgence of discretionary spending over the recent festival holidays. This was an early indication of economic strength. This discretionary spending is a useful measure of the health and expectations of the Chinese economy.

Increased consumer spending during the Qingming Festival was a litmus test for sustained confidence in Chinese economic growth. The festival continued the momentum of discretionary spending seen in the Chinese New Year Festival. This suggests that the Spring Festival consumer spending increase was early evidence of a return in confidence in economic growth, so the high growth rate in Q1 is not a surprise.

The increase in Q1 GDP is evidence of sustainable growth in the economy and economic activity. It reflects increased productivity created in the digital and green economies. This is where the future of economic growth is found.

The Q1 growth beat market expectations by a wide margin, and manufacturing and infrastructure were the main engines. Housing market consolidation is also deepening.

In the second half of the year, economic data may improve further, primarily driven by the government. After all, we are still in an economic cycle that tends to rise from the bottom, making government projects very important. Many local government projects actually gain momentum from mid-year onwards. As these projects unfold, economic data for the second half of the year is expected to be better.

Exports are expected to continue rising this year. So far this year, we have observed that companies engaged in exports, especially those targeting Europe and America, have performed quite well.

From the economic data of the first quarter, three major highlights can be seen in the Chinese economy.

Firstly, the effect of high-quality economic development has been achieved. Traditional industries are upgrading, emerging industries are growing steadily and future industrial cultivation is also strengthening.

Secondly, the innovative effects of the institutional mechanisms have been highlighted, promoting reforms in rules, regulations, management and standards.

Thirdly, China's high-level opening-up measures have had a positive impact on our country's business environment, particularly in attracting foreign investment.

In the first quarter of this year, our country's volume of goods trade import and export broke through 10 trillion yuan ($1.38 trillion) for the first time in the same period of history, with a year-on-year increase of 5 percent.

Among them, exports were 5.74 trillion yuan, an increase of 4.9 percent; imports were 4.43 trillion yuan, an increase of 5 percent. The growth rate of imports and exports reached a new high in six quarters.

Zhang Yansheng believes that the marginal improvement in external demand in the first quarter, coupled with the overall better-than-expected performance of global shipping, logistics and trade chains, reflects that China's foreign trade has started well, with strong resilience and vitality in imports and exports.