China's economic structure improves in 2014

China made progress in improving its economic structure in 2014, though its annual economic growth rate came in at a 24-year low, the country's statistics authority said Tuesday.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement that the country's service sector represented 48.2 percent of China's gross domestic output (GDP) in 2014, up 1.3 percentage points from a year earlier.

The share of the industrial sector was 42.6 percent of GDP, while the agricultural sector accounted for 9.2 percent, the NBS said.

The contribution of final consumption to GDP growth reached 51.2 percent last year, up 3 percentage points from a year earlier.

For years, China has intensified efforts to restructure its economy by optimizing industrial structure and demand structure, promoting balanced regional development and pushing forward urbanization.

The disposable income of rural residents rose 9.2 percent year on year, compared with 6.8 percent for urban residents.

The NBS added that energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 4.8 percent from a year earlier in 2014.

China's GDP grew 7.4 percent last year, in line with the government target of around 7.5 percent, but still the weakest annual expansion in 24 years.