BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's economy in 2023 will see a significant improvement, make bigger strides and contribute more to world economic recovery, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday.

Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to a query about China's economy in 2022 as well as to media forecast that China's economy will pick up significantly in 2023.

Wang said in 2022, China effectively coordinated COVID response with socioeconomic development, stepped up macro regulation, and effectively handled the impact of factors beyond expectation, despite the recurring and lingering pandemic and sluggish global economic growth.

"We were able to stabilize the overall performance of macroeconomy and continue to expand China's economic output both in aggregate and per capita terms," Wang said.

"These are hard-won achievements and reflect the Chinese economy's strong resilience, ample potential and strong vitality and the fact that the fundamentals sustaining China's sound economic growth in the long run stay unchanged," he added.

"With China's COVID response moving into a new phase and life and work returning to normal at a faster pace, the internal drivers of China's economy will gather greater momentum and the dividends of efforts to deepen reform and opening-up will continue to be unleashed," said the spokesperson.