New economy to contribute 12% of Chinese GDP: report

BEIJING - China's new economy will account for an estimated 12 percent of the country's annual GDP this year, according to a research report.

"China's development strategy of innovation and industrial integration is seeing some early success," according to a report released at a forum jointly held by the Renmin University of China, and China Chengxin Credit Management.

The new economic sectors have been growing at a quite steady pace, said the report. In 2014, about 8 percent of Chinese GDP was contributed by new sectors.

For the country's strategic emerging industries, such as new energy and advanced manufacturing, the report predicted that their output would account for about 10 percent of total GDP in 2017.

In the past three years, an average of more than 40,000 new market entities were registered each day, with about 70 percent active in business, the report said.

China's new economic sectors are going through a key stage where "quantitative changes" will lead to "qualitative changes," said Zhang Jie, a researcher with the Renmin University National Academy of Development and Strategy.

The report said that China's economic development must rely on integration between innovation and industrial production, and work must be made to ensure that innovation progress was passed on to production.

The Chinese government expects the combined output of emerging sectors to account for 15 percent of GDP by 2020.