BEIJING - With the last second of the Chinese lunar year of Rabbit being counted down on Sunday, joyous Chinese people erupted in cheers and glittering fireworks displayed against the night sky to greet the Chinese lunar year of Dragon.

The Chinese dragon, opposite to its western counterpart, is perceived as an auspicious, powerful and dynamic icon, always courageous enough to face daunting challenges.

China's efforts to strike balance between promoting growth and restructuring its export-driven economy along a path full of unexpected twists and pot-holes have best defined the spirits of the Chinese dragon.

Despite facing stiff headwinds from a flagging world economy and a festering eurozone debt crisis, China still managed to reach a growth rate of 9.2 percent in 2011, dwarfing any other major economy in the world.

More to the point, a breakdown of China's GDP growth reveals that the country is shifting away from its lopsided growth model toward a more balanced and sustainable one, with consumption contributing a larger share to China's GDP growth than previous years.

The latest data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics showed that investment and consumption contributed 54.2 percent and 51.6 percent to China's GDP growth in 2011, while net exports registered a negative 5.8 percent.

The better tone should also be fed into retail sales, a key indicator of consumer spending, which rose 18.1 percent year-on-year in December, up from the 17.3-percent growth seen in November.

These figures have sent out a strong message that China's unfolding economic restructuring, aimed at reducing its over-reliance on exports to fuel the growth, has yielded some desirable results in 2011, the first year of China's 12th Five-Year Plan.

Around the world, at the stroke of midnight, many might approach the Chinese lunar year of Dragon with more uneasiness than joy. Stock markets are in a funk. The eurozone is in danger of disintegration. Jobless rate is stubbornly high in the United States. Much of the rest world is struggling to avoid the collateral damage from sluggish economic growth in the developed world.

Under such circumstances, the painful yet relatively smooth restructuring of the Chinese economy could prove to be good news not only to China, but also to the world.

If the strong domestic demand can take hold for years to come, it will not only beef up China's abilities to defend the protracted global financial crisis, but also give a boost to the world economy.

That's because a consumer-led China would be likelier to buy more of products and services from all corners of the world, which will support jobs and uplifting economies both at home and abroad..

Meanwhile, a huge Chinese market, with its 1.3 billion people, means more exports and investment opportunities for other countries, thus helping them offsetting a dwindling demand from the West.

China, with the spirits of the Chinese dragon, is ready to work with the rest of the world and show more courage to bid farewell to the beaten path so as to pull through the current economic downturn.