Industrial recovery still weak: official

China's industrial economic recovery is still suffering from a weak foundation despite steady growth in the first three quarters of the year, a senior government official warned.

In the first three quarters, industrial added-value by enterprises above the designated scale increased by 9.6 percent year-on-year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The figure was 0.3 percentage points higher than in the previous six months, with the individual figures for the respective three quarters being 9.5 percent, 9.1 percent and 10.1 percent.

Xiao Chunquan, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said.

at a news conference on Thursday that although China achieved positive progress, there are still challenges and problems, such as the inadequacy of effective demand and severe overcapacity in some sectors.

"The foundation for the industrial economy's stabilization and recovery is not solid," said Xiao.

At the beginning of this year, the ministry set up an annual target of realizing 10 percent growth in terms of industrial added-value above the designated scale. Xiao said the country is heading toward the target in full gear and is expecting a good result.

Information consumption, a field that involves e-commerce business, the Internet and cloud-computing technology, has been a highlight and played an increasingly prominent role in driving economic development, the ministry said.

For the past nine months, the country's communication sector raised its business revenue to 870.9 billion yuan ($143 billion). up 8.6 percent year-on-year. The trading volume of domestic e-commerce market reached 7.5 trillion yuan, an increase of 35 percent over the same period last year.

China, which already is the world's biggest telecom market, has seen a rapid development of its third-generation (3G) wireless network services and is going to embrace the 4G mobile era soon. The number of mobile users nationwide reached 1.21 billion, among which 368 million were 3G users.