The performance of the Chinese economy in the first half of the year was steady and in line with expectations, and China is confident of achieving its main full-year development targets, Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday.

"New economy is vibrant, new business forms are booming, and new growth momentum is accumulating," Li said in a keynote speech at the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

The comments came shortly after the release of China's key macroeconomic data earlier in the day. Official statistics showed that China's GDP expanded 6.7 percent year on year in the first half of 2016 to reach 34.06 trillion yuan ($5.08 trillion).

"The data shows that the Chinese economy will not head for a hard landing, and there is a growing trend that the services industry has become the locomotives for China's economy," Qian Jun, a professor of finance at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global Times on Friday.

He added that the figure is also good news for the global economy, which faces uncertainties concerning the influence of Brexit and the fragile recovering of the US economy. 

China is confident of achieving the main development targets set for this year and ensuring medium-high economic growth rates to take the economy to medium-high levels of development, said Li.

Economic growth in the second quarter was slightly faster than expected, holding steady from the first quarter and fueling hopes that the economy has entered a period of relatively slower but steady growth, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Overall June activities are much stronger than expectation and China is on track to achieve this year's growth target, Zhu Haibin, chief economist of JP Morgan China, told the Global Times.

"It is a challenge to identify where growth will come from in the coming months. The greatest concern is the ongoing slide in private-sector investment," Tom Rafferty, an economist at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, said in a note sent to the Global Times on Friday.

However, Sheng Laiyun, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics, said China's economic stabilization is set to continue.

He elaborated that major indicators are operating in a reasonable zone while supply-side structural reform and economic restructuring continue to advance.

Xinhua contributed to this story