China's economy is expected to be "relatively a bright spot" in 2009 although globally it is still going to be a very difficult year, a World Bank official said on Monday.

David Dollar, the World Bank's country director for China, told Xinhua that compared to the rest of the world, China's economic prospects in 2009 are "pretty good."

Citing China's 6.1 percent GDP growth in the first quarter, Dollar said he believes the country's economy is picking up and will be able to meet the annual 6.5 percent growth the World Bank has forecast.

"It is a very difficult year globally, but China is relatively a bright spot and it will have a positive spill-over effect on the rest of Asia and the world," he said.

"I don't think Chinese consumers can save the whole world, but they are making a very positive contribution to get the world economy to do better," he said.

The Beijing-based American economist returned to Washington for the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are expected to issue their analysis on the current global financial crisis and the world's economic prospects.

Dollar said two lessons should be drawn from the crisis. First, quite a few banks have got into trouble partly because the United States and other developed countries were pretty aggressive about deregulating their banking sectors, so more careful banking system regulations are needed globally.

"China has been doing a lot of right things, such as having quite good regulations on the banking system, so the banks did not get into trouble," he said.