22 out of 31 regions post faster growth than national level

A man works at a small fabric factory at Kanglecun, one of the urban villages in Guangzhou on February 29, 2016 in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.[Photo/VCG]

Of the 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions that have released their GDP for the first quarter, a total of 22 saw their GDP exceed the national average growth rate of 6.9 percent, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Four regions witnessed their GDP top more than one trillion yuan ($145.14 billion) in the first quarter. East China's Zhejiang province, with a GDP of 1.06 trillion yuan, was the new comer to the one-trillion-yuan GDP club.

South China's Guangdong province recorded 1.94 trillion yuan in its GDP in the first quarter and took the top spot. The GDP of Jiangsu and Shandong provinces reached 1.88 trillion yuan and 1.67 trillion yuan, ranking second and third respectively.

In the first quarter, Tibet autonomous region, Southwest municipality Chongqing and Guizhou province led the growth at the provincial level, posting growth rate of 11 percent, 10.5 percent and 10.2 percent respectively.

In sharp contrast, the northeastern steel-making province of Liaoning recorded the lowest growth of 2.4 percent. Last year, the province saw its economy shrink by 2.5 percent. The local government admitted in January that a raft of economic data had been falsified from 2011 to 2014 and vowed to eliminate the bubbles in statistics.

China's economy posted a forecast-beating growth rate in the first quarter of 2017, with GDP up 6.9 percent from a year ago, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The reading, the quickest increase in 18 months, was above the full-year target of 6.5 percent and the 6.8-percent increase registered in the fourth quarter of 2016.