But the figures also mask a deeper structural challenge for China. The more recent set of data comparing the three months to March with the December quarter shows that galloping growth is starting to slow as Chinese shoppers struggle to buy as much as they did pre-pandemic. There have also been delays to the vaccine rollout and doubts over their efficacy.

Since the December quarter,the economy grew by 0.6 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms,lower than the median 1.4 per cent expected by Bloomberg analysts.

On a quarterly basis industry and construction growth fell from above 2 per cent to 1.3 per cent. The service sector which includes transport,investment and healthcare also dropped by 2.3 per cent.

“All told,momentum looks to have been broadly stable in March,” said Capital Economics senior China economist Julian Evans-Pritchard.

“The upshot is that with the economy already above its pre-virus trend and policy support being withdrawn,China’s post-COVID rebound is levelling off.”

While markets have been buoyed by vaccine progress,particularly in the US and the United Kingdom,the rollouts still face significant uncertainties in China and Australia,where their success is seen as a key to reopening the economy.

The head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Prevention and Control,Gao Fu,on Saturday told a medical conference thatChina wanted to improve the efficacy rates of its vaccines.

In remarks first reported by Chinese media outletThe Paper,Dr Fu said the vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” and “it was now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunisation process.”

China’s Sinovac Biotech’s vaccine CoronaVac,which has been distributed to Indonesia and Brazil among others,has reported a rate of 50.4 per cent in Brazilian trials. The level is well below the 90 per cent efficacy rates of Pfizer and Moderna.

The country’s rollout is also behind its target of immunising 40 per cent of its 1.4 billion people by June. It had suppressed the virus since the initial outbreak in Wuhan in late 2019,but its public response to domestic vaccination has lagged behind those by the US and the UK.

Local authorities have been encouraging the Chinese to get their shots by offering grocery packages while some companies have been threatened with having their operations suspended if they do not have more than 85 per cent of their workforce vaccinated.