China's economy has been developing rapidly over the past 40 years since the reform and opening-up started in 1978, and official data showed that the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita of Chinese people in 2018 surpassed the average level of the middle-income countries.

The GNI per capita for Chinese residents was recorded at $9,732 in 2018, according to a statement released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

It indicates that China has been accelerating its pace of overseas investment amid a slowdown of global economy brought about by the US' unilateralism, and the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative has fostered a new driving force for economic growth, not only for China but for the whole world, Chinese economists said.

"China has been unwaveringly upholding the multilateralism of the global trading system, and will contribute more to the stability and growth of the world economy in the future," Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

This is also in line with the trend of the internationalization of Chinese currency, yuan, which is in need of the broader economic activities with China's investments worldwide. It is also in accordance with expanding footprint of Chinese enterprises in foreign countries, Dong said.

China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is more widely-quoted economic data, reached 90.03 trillion yuan in 2018, up 6.6 percent year-on-year.

Along with China's rising contribution to global economic growth, its international standing and influence have been significantly enhanced, NBS noted.

GNI, formerly known as Gross National Product (GNP), generally refers to an estimate of the total market value of goods and services produced by a country's residents, regardless of where they are located.