Authorities also said that judging from the first quarter's economic performance, supply-side structural reform is also advancing as the country moves to address issues like industrial overcapacity.

"Concerning cutting industrial overcapacity, there are two main breakthroughs in 2016: steel and coal. In the first quarter, the production of raw steel dropped 3.2 percent, production of raw coal dropped 5.3%, which are the positive outcomes of efforts to cut overcapacity. In terms of destocking, which mainly refers to the inventory of  real estate and enterprises, especially real estate stock."

"Property sales jumped 33.1% in the first three months this year since last year's signs of improvement. By the end of March, there were about 735 million square meters of unsold properties across China,  some 4.15 million square meters down from the end of February. Regarding deleveraging effects, asset liability ratio of industrial enterprises above designated size dropped 0.1% year-on-year at the end of February, which is a positive change," said Sheng Laiyun, spokesman of National Bereau of Statistics.