China's GDP data consistent with overall strength in the economy: US experts

China's economy, facing notable downward pressures amid a difficult economic overhaul, grew 6.9 percent year on year in 2015, the slowest annual expansion in a quarter of a century but still enviable by global standards.

China's economic growth rate target has been set at 6.5 percent to 7 percent in 2016, with an average annual growth rate of at least 6.5 percent through 2020, Premier Li Keqiang said Saturday when presenting the government work report to an annual parliamentary session.

This year's target is aligned with China's goal of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and takes into consideration the need to advance structural reform, Li said.

"From the GDP growth perspective, my research shows the overall GDP growth has slowed somewhat, but remains stable," Nie said, adding that the fundamentals of China's economy remain solid with robust consumption growth.

"I think the basic numbers (economic data) are pretty good, they are indicating the broad trends," David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, shared similar views.

"Probably when China's economy slows down, the GDP data may slightly overstate what's really happening, but I certainly think ... the data are basically good enough to tell us what's going on," Dollar told Xinhua.

Xu Xianchun, deputy head of the NBS, said in January that China has adopted the Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS) system, which was created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), since October 2015 to improve data transparency.

China's practice is in line with international standards and its data is accepted by international organizations including the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF, Xu said.

To help market participants better understand new developments in China's economy, Nie said it's important for China to construct good measures on the strength of the service sector as it represents a fast-growing area.

"In my analysis, I have used two commonly used measures of services, the PMI non-manufacturing index from China's National Bureau of Statistics and Caixin PMI services index, but I think more work needs to be done in this area," he said.