BEIJING - A global economic downturn is the main reason behind China's slowdown in growth, rather than domestic issues, said Justin Yifu Lin, former chief economist of the World Bank.

The continued slowdown in China's economic growth is more the result of external and cyclical factors, he said at a forum held by Peking University on Sunday.

China's GDP grew 6.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2016, steady with the first half and within the government's target range of between 6.5 and 7 percent for 2016.

In 2015, China's economy recorded the slowest annual expansion in a quarter of a century by growing 6.9 percent year on year.

Comparing China's growth to that of emerging and developed economies, Lin pointed out that although high-performing, high-income economies do not face the same domestic issues as China, their economic performance has been similar or even worse.

Therefore, countries must all be suffering from the same external and cyclical factors, he said.

Lin said weakness in the global economy has affected China's exports, and the country's domestic growth momentum lies in the expansion of both consumption and investment demand.

By maintaining investment and consumption at a reasonable level, China will be able to achieve the target annual average growth rate of at least 6.5 percent between 2016 and 2020 as set in the country's 13th Five-year Plan.

In the face of more challenging external and domestic conditions in 2017, China has set stability as the tone for next year's economic planning and pledged to press ahead with supply-side structural reform during the Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded Friday.