China's economy grew at its slowest pace in 18 months at the start of 2014, but did a touch better than expected and showed some improvement in March, suggesting Beijing will not rush to follow up recent steps to support activity.
Authorities have ruled out major stimulus to fight short-term dips in growth, signaling the slowdown was an expected consequence of their reform drive, even as some analysts think the economy will lose further momentum.
The economy grew 7.4% in the January-March quarter from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday. That was slightly stronger than the median forecast of 7.3% in a Reuters poll but still slower than 7.7% in the final quarter of 2013.
It was China's slowest annual growth since the third quarter of 2012, when the world's second-largest economy also grew 7.4%.
For the quarter, the economy grew 1.4%, the slowest rate in two years, which experts said equated to annualized growth of 5.8%.
Beijing has announced some modest measures, such as tax cuts for small firms and speeding up investment in railways, to try to steady growth near its target of 7.5% without disrupting plans to restructure the economy or worsening problems of overcapacity and debt.
Activity data for March, released with the GDP figures, showed that China may be making some headway in its attempt to enhance the role of consumption and cut its reliance on traditional growth engines of exports and investment.
Retail sales were a shade ahead of forecasts with an annual increase of 12.2%, while factory output came in just below expectations with a rise of 8.8%.
