With concerns about whether China's economy at times being a regular talking point in wealth management, the country's leader has sounded a confident note about growth for 2016.

China expects to be able to clock up economic growth of 6.7 per cent in 2016, within a targeted range set earlier in the year, Reuters quotes vice finance minister Zhu Guangyao as saying yesterday.

The Asian giant saw GDP growth rise at 6.7 per cent in the first three quarters last year. Zhu reportedly said he was confident the growth rate would have reached the same level or more in the fourth quarter of 2016.

The country has aimed for a growth rate of between 6.5 per cent and 7 per cent in 2016; policymakers in China have sought to manage a gradual slowdown to what had been a red-hot growth rate. Over the past year or so, concerns about a possible "hard landing" for China, and vulnerabilities in its financial system, have at times hit Asian markets. However, some commentators, such as Matthews Asia, the US-based investment house, have argued that fears about China are overblown and that the country has in broad terms managed its adjustments relatively well. (See a recent article here.)

A concern for China more recently has been the election to the US presidency in November last year of Donald Trump, because Trump's protectionist rhetoric suggests his administration would hit Chinese exports to the US. However, to some extent it is argued that China has shifted towards being more domestically-driven and less reliant on exports for its GDP than in the past.