HONG KONG  Two senior Chinese officials on Wednesday offered differing interpretations on the state of China’s economy, one expressing optimism that the country was on the road to recovery, the other warning that it could be bumpy and slow.

The comments by a top official of China’s central bank and the chief economist of a leading research organization illustrated how hard it is for economists anywhere to reach a consensus on whether China and other leading economies have now put the worst behind them.

A string of recent data has made most observers reasonably confident that the pace of decline has at least slowed in the United States and that China’s economy is likely to pick up again. China is one of the world’s few large economies to avoid outright recession this year, although growth will be well below the double-digit rates before the global financial crisis began.

Yi Gang, a vice governor of the People’s Bank of China, said in Beijing that a two-year stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan, or $585 billion that was announced in November had helped restore confidence and support a growth rate close to the official target of 8 percent this year.