Despite registering a GDP slowdown of less than nine percent in the October to December quarter, China's growth will play an increasingly important role in the global economy, experts said.
A report by the United Nations, released on Tuesday, put the outlook for global economic growth at 2.6% this year and 3.2 percent for 2013, as compared with 2.8 percent seen in 2011.
However, the forecast is conditional on containment of the euro zone debt crisis and a halt to further moves toward stringent fiscal austerity in the developed countries.
The report said developing economies will continue to stoke the world's economic engine, but the growth rate in 2012 and 2013 will be well below those of the previous two years.
The UN report gave China's economic growth a positive forecast of 8.7 percent for this year.
The country's key 2011 economic figures, released on Tuesday, show that fourth-quarter GDP growth slowed to 8.9 percent from 9.1 percent in the previous quarter.
The figure was the slowest rate of growth since the second quarter of 2009, but was still slightly stronger than the prediction of 8.7 percent made by a number of analysts.
"Growth close to 9 percent for the world's second-largest economy was absolutely good news for a global economy on the edge of a double dip (recession)," said Wang Tongsan, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Wang admitted that a further slowdown in China's growth may drag on countries such as the US and Germany, which are counting on exports to China for their own recovery.
However, China's better-than-expected growth rate should boost confidence in the prospects for the global economy, Wang said.
China is now the largest contributor to global growth, according to a recent report from JP Morgan Chase & Co.
In 2011, the country accounted for nearly 12 percent of aggregate global GDP and more than one-third of its growth.
