China’s gross domestic product expanded 7.3 per cent year-on-year in July-September, official data shows, slumping to a five-year low despite official efforts to shore up growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

The figure, which was better than expected, saw the Australian dollar rise 0.2 per cent to just above US 88 cents shortly after its release at 1:00pm (AEDT).

The third-quarter figure announced by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was lower than the 7.5 per cent expansion in the previous three months, but exceeded the median forecast of 7.2 per cent in an AFP survey of 17 economists.

It is the slowest since the 6.6 per cent recorded in the first quarter of 2009, in the depths of the global financial crisis.

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“China’s economy showed a good momentum of stable growth in the first three quarters of the year with progress made and quality improved,” the NBS said in a statement.

“However we should keep in mind that the internal and external environment is still complicated and the economic development still faces many challenges.

“We should maintain the continuity and the stability of macro policies and make anticipatory adjustments and fine-tuning in an appropriate and timely manner, so as to achieve a stable and sound development of the national economy.”

The NBS also said the economy expanded 7.4 per cent in the first nine months of the year.

Separately, the Bureau said industrial production, which measures output at factories, workshops and mines, rose 8.0 per cent year-on-year in September. That is a rebound from a more than five year low of 6.9 per cent in August.

Retail sales, a key indicator of consumer spending, expanded 11.6 per cent in the same month, while fixed asset investment, a measure of government spending on infrastructure, rose 16.1 per cent on-year in the first nine months.