China's economy picked up pace in the third quarter of the year, fuelled by a massive government stimulus programme that helped the world's number three economy recover from the global recession.

According to government data released on Thursday the economy expanded 8.9 per cent from a year earlier, up from 7.9 per cent the previous quarter.

In a statement officials said that combined growth for the first nine months of the year was 7.7 per cent, putting the economy on track to reach the government's growth target of 8 per cent for the full year.

China's government has frequently highlighted the target of 8 per cent as the minimum annual expansion rate China needs to keep creating jobs and maintain social stability.

"We are sure that we can achieve the full year target of 8 percent," Li Xiaochao, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics told reporters in Beijing.

"There is no question about it."

Stimulus

The latest figures mark a significant upturn from the first quarter of the year when growth in the January to March period stood at just 6.1 per cent.

But a massive government stimulus programme, involving $586bn of government spending, has helped counter the downturn and limit the impact of plunging demand for Chinese exports.

Much of the cash has been spent on new rail and road programmes, aimed at pumping up the domestic economy.

As a result, officials say, investment in factories, construction and other fixed assets rose by one third in the first three quarters of the year, hitting a record $2.27 trn.

"Investment played an important and positive role in maintaining relatively fast growth and reversing the slowdown," Li Xiaochao, the statistics bureau spokesman, told reporters.

Export rebound

Meanwhile, he added, domestic consumption such as consumer spending contributed nearly a third of the growth in economic activity.

At the same time a mild rebound in orders from overseas markets has helped restore some of the millions of jobs lost at the peak of the downturn when factories closed by the thousands as plunging global demand slammed exports.

Many analysts have expressed caution that growth rates may begin to slide once again as the stimulus spending runs its course.

But Robert Howe, chief executive of Geomatrix, a Hong Kong-based-investment company, said there were signs that the recovery had expanded beyond being almost purely government spending-related.

"Some of the fixed asset investment was from the private sector, so it is spreading and it is a bit more sustainable," he told Al Jazeera.

Nonetheless he said was sceptical about hopes in some quarters that China's apparent rapid recovery from the slowdown could help prop up other struggling economies.

"China is always going to be about China," Howe said.

"They're going to be helping Australia, buying as much of Australia's resources as the Australians will let them, and they'll do the same in Africa. But they're not going to be creating a lot of jobs in Iowa, Detroit, and Birmingham, England – it's going to be a shift to autonomous growth in China."