New engines gain momentum
Monthly dips in growth should not justify panic over the world's second largest economy, Zhao said.
The economy is actually emerging stronger with solid improvement in structural reform and new growth industries, official data showed.
Against the backdrop of lackluster industrial production, output of the high-tech industry climbed 12.2 percent in July, accelerating from June's 10.6-percent increase and more than double that of the entire industrial sector.
New-energy car production surged 88.7 percent and revenues of strategic emerging service sectors gained 15.6 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Meanwhile, with an annual expansion of 40 percent, China's sharing economy market, including Internet-based ride-hailing businesses, will account for more than 10 percent of the country's GDP by 2020, according to an Internet Society of China report.
The service sector expanded 7.5 percent in the first half, accounting for 54.1 percent of the overall economy, up 1.8 percentage points from a year earlier, according to NBS data.
Investment in energy-intensive industries also continued to cool down, resulting in a year-on-year decline of 5.2 percent in energy consumption per unit of GDP in the first half.
Thanks to new growth engines, the Chinese economy generated 7.17 million new urban jobs in the first half of 2016, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.
Li of Tsinghua University pointed to stable administration and policies, increasing human capital and further opening of the economy as three major advantages for China to achieve sustained growth.
The country's growth in the next two decades will mainly be driven by urbanization, consumption and industry rearrangement, Li said.
Challenges still daunting
If China continues its current supply-side structural reform, and carries out pro-reform and stabilizing measures, its economy will continue to improve, said Zhao.
However, the challenges should not be underestimated, as it is not easy for a huge ship to change course overnight, experts said.
Take the overcapacity cuts in the steel sector as an example.
In the first six months, China completed only about 30 percent of the planned cuts for the whole year. Warming steel prices had watchdogs on alert for a rebound in production capacity as crude steel output surged.
A price rebound means local officials have balked, with some deciding to defer capacity cuts. Creating new jobs for hundreds of thousands of laid-off employees and the massive debts of steel enterprises pose tough challenges ahead for cutting overcapacity.
However, the economy has embarked on an irreversible path of restructuring, and the transition, which is crucial to the country's supply-side structural reform, is bound to forge ahead, experts said.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Friday issued an affirmative forecast, expecting a positive outlook for the Chinese economy and predicting 6.6-percent GDP growth for this year.
China's economic transition will continue and will be positive overall for the global economy, the IMF said in a report after concluding its annual economic health check on the Chinese economy.
"Many countries could only dream of achieving growth rates that China has and is likely to achieve, which also reflects positively on the reforms that Chinese policymakers have undertaken," said James Daniel, the IMF mission chief for China.
