China's economy grew by 65.5 percent over the past five years, or an average annual increase of 10.6 percent, to become the world's fourth largest economy, Premier Wen Jiabao said at the annual parliament session on Wednesday.

He said the country's gross domestic product reached 24.66 trillion yuan (about 3.425 trillion U.S. dollars) last year, while total government revenue reached 5.13 trillion yuan (712 billion U.S. dollars), a 171 percent rise in five years.

In the meantime, China's foreign exchange reserves topped 1.52 trillion U.S. dollars, Wen said in his report to the First Session of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC) opening here on Wednesday.

In the past five years since the First Session of the 10th NPC, China scrapped the centuries-old agricultural tax, and its grain output rose four consecutive years to top 500 billion kilograms in 2007, Wen said.

"China has entered a new stage in developing a more open economy," he said.

Last year, china became the third largest trading nation in the world with 2.17 trillion U.S. dollars of imports and exports, said Wen.

(Xinhua News Agency March 5, 2008)