Quotable

"China is expected to achieve relatively fast GDP growth of 6.8 or 6.9 percent in the first half of this year."

Pan Jiancheng, deputy head of the China Economic Monitoring& Analysis Bureau of Statistics, which is affiliated to the National Bureau of Statistics

"A major factor in its success is the billion-plus users on Tencent's social networking platforms WeChat and QQ. ... For smartphone users, it helps them kill spare time."

Dong Zhen, interactive entertainment analyst at internet consultancy Analysys in Beijing Online game Honor of Kings has made lots of money for internet giant Tencent, raking in revenue of more than 5.5 billion yuan ($809 million; 713 million euros; ￡625 million) in the first quarter, Chinese gaming industry database Gamma Data Corp estimated

"The commissioning of the Huadian and TGC-2 joint venture gas-fired power plant is ... part of a clear effort by Chinese power groups to diversify their earnings sources, and these investments are unlikely to slow down in the future."

Joseph Jacobelli, a senior analyst of Asian utilities and infrastructure at Bloomberg Intelligence Huadian power plant - with a total investment of $571 million (504 million euros; ￡441 million) - is in Yaroslavskaya Oblast in Russia. It started operating on June 21 and is the result of a project launched by China Huadian Hong Kong Co and Russian regional power company TGC-2 in 2011.

(China Daily European Weekly 07/07/2017 page24)