China is off to a rough start in 2016.
Economists say the world's second-largest economy grew at the slowest pace in seven years during the first quarter.
Gross domestic product is forecast to have expanded by 6.6% in the three months ended March, compared with the same period a year earlier. That would be China's weakest quarter since the dark days of the financial crisis in early 2009.
For the full year, economists expect GDP growth to slow further to 6.3% and fall short of the government's own target of 6.5% to 7%, compared with annual expansion of 6.9% in 2015. Official GDP data for the first quarter will be published by China's National Bureau of Statistics on Friday.
After years of explosive growth, China's economy is now cooling fast, partly because of government efforts to shift China's growth engine away from manufacturing and toward the services sector.
The country is also burdened with high levels of debt after years of aggressive lending.
China announced in late February that it was planning to shed 1.8 million coal and steel jobs in an effort to reduce excess capacity. The cuts represent about 20% and 11% of China's coal and steel jobs, respectively.
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