China just posted its strongest quarterly earnings on record as the world's second-largest economy continued its robust recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

China’s GDP growth grew 18.3 percent year-on-year in the first quarter was the strongest since China began keeping records in 1992, and was driven by a surge in retail sales, industrial production and investment in fixed assets, according to statistics released on Friday.

The gross domestic product (GDP) reached 24.93 trillion yuan (about USD 3.82 trillion) in Q1, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. This is the highest quarterly growth rate since China first began publishing GDP data in 1993.

The double-digit growth puts the average Q1 growth of 2020 and 2021 at 5 percent from the 2019 level, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. In the first three months, China saw a steady industrial production rebound, improvement in market sales, recovery in fixed-asset investment, and noticeable momentum in foreign trade of goods, it said.

China's economy, which was the first to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic when it broke out in central China's Wuhan city in late 2019, and early to recover from its impact, grew 2.3 percent in 2020, registering the lowest annual growth rate in 45 years. The GDP of the world's second-largest economy grew by 2.3 percent expanding to USD 15.42 trillion in 2020, according to the data released by the NBS said.

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