China’s economic growth held steady at 7.3 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, slightly better than expected but still hovering at its weakest since the global financial crisis, keeping pressure on policymakers to head off a sharper slowdown. The world’s second-largest economy grew 7.4 percent in the whole of 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday, undershooting the government’s 7.5 percent target and the weakest expansion in 24 years. It was the first since 1999 that the government had missed a yearly growth target for gross domestic product (GDP). The China statistics bureau said at a news conference that the economy faces difficulties but it will keep growth within a “reasonable range.” A series of incremental market reforms and modest stimulus measures over the year did little to reverse a slowdown in the property market, and industrial overcapacity, slowing investment and […]