China's economy has demonstrated robust resilience over the past five years despite headwinds, with the latest national economic census pointing to significant strides in key areas including economic scale, structural optimization, and innovation-driven and digitally fueled development.

Looking forward, officials and experts said China's economy is on track for steady and sustainable growth in the long run, given its ultra-large domestic market, the advancement of industrial transformation and upgrading, a thriving digital economy and comprehensive deepening of reforms.

The fifth national economic census showed on Thursday that China's GDP for 2023 was revised up to 129.4 trillion yuan ($17.7 trillion), an increase of 3.4 trillion yuan compared with the earlier, preliminary calculation.

Revising GDP data is a common practice worldwide, as GDP figures are not fixed after the initial calculation. Instead, they are continuously updated based on more complete and reliable data, as preliminary figures typically prioritize timeliness and rely on the availability of basic data, which may result in sacrificing some degree of completeness and detail.

"China's GDP reached nearly 130 trillion yuan in 2023, maintaining its position as the world's second-largest economy," said Kang Yi, head of the National Bureau of Statistics. "Over the past five years, China's contribution to global economic growth has averaged around 30 percent, making it the largest driver of growth for the world economy."

Kang told a news conference held in Beijing on Thursday that compared with the results of the fourth national economic census, China's economic development has shown significant positive changes in aspects such as overall scale, structural optimization, innovation-driven growth and green transformation, demonstrating strong resilience and tremendous potential.

Data from the fifth national economic census showed that a total of 33.27 million legal entities were engaged in the secondary and tertiary industries as of the end of 2023, up 52.7 percent compared with the figures at the end of 2018.

The role of technology in driving industrial upgrading has become more evident, with a noticeable acceleration in the application of new technologies and processes. The number of patent applications filed by industrial enterprises above the designated size reached 614,000 in 2023, up 65.1 percent compared with 2018. Enterprises above the designated size are those with annual revenue of at least 20 million yuan.

Meanwhile, the research and development expenditure of industrial enterprises above the designated size hit 2.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 61.9 percent from 2018.

Notably, industries related to strategic emerging sectors saw robust growth, with 96,000 large industrial enterprises in these fields by the end of 2023, representing nearly one-fifth of the country's major industrial companies.

While dismissing some pessimistic views on the Chinese economy propagated by some Western media and scholars, experts said China still has the conditions and capabilities to strengthen economic momentum and foster steady and high-quality growth in the long term.

Joe Ngai, chairman of management consultancy McKinsey China, reaffirmed his belief that "the next China is still China", saying that there is no substitute for the Chinese market, whether as a market for products or in terms of demand.

In fact, China's economic structure has continued to improve in recent years. The added value of China's tertiary industry, a term for the services sector of the economy, accounted for 56.3 percent of the country's GDP in 2023, an increase of over 2 percentage points compared with 2018, NBS data showed.

Meanwhile, the number of legal entities in the manufacturing sector reached more than 4 million by the end of 2023, a 23.8 percent increase from 2018, with total assets in the sector growing 41.7 percent to 151 trillion yuan.

Zhang Ming, deputy director of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Finance and Banking, said that looking ahead, China's annual GDP growth rate is likely to reach 4.7 percent to 5 percent in 2025 if the government takes expansionary moves in macroeconomic adjustments.