China's 2016 GDP will maintain a steady growth of 6.7 percent as economic indicators bounce back, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said in an annual report.

In the first three quarters of this year, the country's GDP totaled 53 trillion yuan ($7.82 trillion), a 6.7 percent year-on-year increase, with consumption contributing 71 percent of economic growth, up by 13.3 percentage points compared with the same period last year; the fixed-asset investment rising by 8.2 percent year-on-year to 42.7 trillion yuan, and the CPI increasing 2 percent, up 0.6 percentage points over the same period last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The potential economic growth rate is expected to be in the range of 6.3 percent to 6.6 percent during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) period, the annual report said.

It pointed out that China has entered the upper-middle-income economies club with the GNI (gross national income) per capital reaching $8,016 in 2015. The result cited the World Bank's classification of countries.

Meanwhile, six of Chinese cities and provinces stepped into the high-income stage: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu province, Zhejiang province, and Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Changing the economic growth model and carrying out sustainable urbanization development will help the world's second-largest country break out the middle-income trap, the government's think tank said.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn  Author: Zhang Jie)