China can sustain an annual growth of around 7 percent during the 13th Five Year Plan from 2016 to 2020, and enter the high-income stage by 2025, primarily due to the deepened reform, reported Economic Information Daily quoting a think tank.

The potential growth rate will average or even surpass 7 percent, provided that the reform's pull-up effect to productivity equals to at least half of that in the last round in 1994, said Song Li, director of the Institute of Economic Research under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

"Constrained by the change of factor conditions, effects that this round of reforms can deliver may be short of that in 1994, but a 50 percent or above basically can still offset downward effects," said Song to the newspaper.

He projects China to enter the stage of a high-income country in around 2025 after replacing the US as world's largest economy.

"The quality of growth throughout the 13th Five Year Plan will be especially crucial in terms of skipping the so-called 'middle-income trap' and leaping directly into high-income," said the researcher to the newspaper.

This year marks the final year of the 12th Five Year Plan and the beginning of policy planning for the five years ahead.

Song advised the 13th Five Year Plan should extend policy scope throughout 2030, mapping out strategies to upgrade industrial structures, build consumption-driven urbanization, go global and to promote energy saving and environmental friendliness, according to the newspaper.

Reform will take the lead from demography and resources to generate economic dividends and become the new power for sustainable growth, he added.