Pressure remains on Chinese economy as indicators fall short of expectations

"With gloomy prospects for external demand, China will still need to rely on domestic demand to maintain steady growth, indicating that future monetary and fiscal policies should continue to be relaxed," he said.

China's exports dropped 0.9 percent from a year earlier in the first seven months, according to new customs data.

A research note from Minsheng Securities also said China's growth is still facing huge pressure and the country needs to make more efforts to realize its goal of annual economic growth of around 7 percent.

China should take more pragmatic measures to stabilize growth, including further cuts in the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) and more targeted measures to reduce long-term interest rates, Minsheng said.

Qu added that the disappointing figures will also reinforce the market's expectations for further depreciation of China's currency, the yuan, posing risks of overcorrection in the exchange rate, which may lead to retaliation from other countries.

On Tuesday, China's central bank changed the exchange rate formation system to take into consideration the closing rate of the inter-bank foreign exchange market on the previous day, as well as supply and demand in the market and price movements of major currencies.

The central parity rate of the yuan weakened by about 1.6 percent against the US dollar Wednesday, following a 2-percent depreciation on Tuesday.

HSBC forecast an additional 25-basis-point interest rate cut and a 200-basis-point cut to the RRR in the second half to sustain growth.

The central bank has cut both interest rates and the RRR three times since the beginning of this year.