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China's potential economic growth rate is estimated to stand between 5 percent and 6 percent, which is still a global medium-to-high range especially considering the sheer size of China, reflecting the huge potential of the world's second-largest economy, Chinese officials said on Friday, after the country announced a first-half GDP growth of 2.5 percent on a year-on-year basis. 

"As the economy expands, constraints from labor and resource environment will also be amplified, which means the potential GDP growth rate will edge down gradually. So this is not an easy task for China, with huge economic volume, to maintain a medium-to-high growth rate," Fu Linghui, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said at a State Council Information Office press briefing of the on Friday. 

China's gap with developed economies in terms of GDP per capita also indicates huge room and potential of future growth, according to Fu. "China is still the world's largest developing nation… China's GDP per capita has exceeded $10,000, but still lags significantly behind when compared with an average of $40,000 in developed countries," Fu explained.

In the second quarter of the year, China's GDP grew at 0.4 percent, according to data from the NBS. 

"China's economy has registered a stable recovery so far this year as the country adopted strong measures to counter the impact of unexpected factors. The second quarter economy realized positive growth despite downward pressure, which is not an easy achievement," Fu said.

The country has set this year's annual GDP goal at 5.5 percent.

Chinese officials said that in the second half, the economic activity is expected to improve and maintain recovery momentum despite external and internal uncertainty, with a number of policies aiming to stabilize growth, easing of epidemic situation and the further leveraging of the country's strong governance ability.

"Chinese economy has strong resilience and huge potential. Its long-term positive economic fundamentals have not changed," Fu said. In addition to a rebound in investment and factory activity, innovation-driven development will also continue injecting new dynamics into China's growth, he added.

In the first half, China's high-tech manufacturing added value surged 9.6 percent, outpacing average industrial added value growth of 3.4 percent. Production of new energy vehicles, solar batteries and mobile telecom base station equipment rose 111.2 percent, 31.8 percent and 19.8 percent year-on-year, respectively, NBS data showed. 

Global Times