The authorities will release official gross domestic product figures next week but Premier Li Keqiang has given his own forecast.
"Over the past year, the Chinese economy has been on a stable and favourable development path, with its overall circumstances better than expected," Li said in a speech Wednesday at a diplomatic summit in Cambodia, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The Chinese economy grew 6.7 per cent in 2016 -- its slowest pace for more than a quarter of a century.
In an effort to stem winter air pollution, authorities in recent months have conducted a massive campaign to shut down polluting factories and slash excess industrial capacity, particularly in the north.
According to analysts, the aggressive campaign might have stalled growth in the fourth quarter, due to the slowdown in industrial production.
But Li said: "The annual gross domestic product is expected to grow by around 6.9 per cent."
"The crux of why the Chinese economy was able to perform so well is that we insisted on not implementing a flood of stimuli" and instead sought to foster "new sources of growth", he said.
Beijing seeks to rebalance China's economic model towards services -- which already account for more than 50 percent of GDP -- as well as neexports, moving away from heavy industries plagued by severe overcapacity and indebtedness.
The investment-heavy and export-dependent model that brought four decades of breakneck economic growth has left the country heavily in debt.
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