* China May factory output up 8.9 percent, retail sales up
* Asian shares gain on growing optimism for economy
* U.S. retail sales up, jobless claims down
* IMF ups 2010 growth view; World Bank cuts it for 2009
By Langi Chiang and Simon Rabinovitch
BEIJING, June 12 (Reuters) - China's May factory output rose more than forecast and retail sales growth accelerated, giving new impetus to investor hopes the world's third-largest economy can lead a global revival.
The data followed figures from the United States on Thursday that showed a rise in retail sales in May for the first time in three months and a fall last week in workers claiming jobless benefits to the lowest level since January.
A growing conviction that the global economy is starting to claw its way out of the deepest recession in six decades has seen stock markets rallying strongly from the depths plumbed in March, while hopes of burgeoning demand have driven prices of oil and industrial metals to multi-month highs.
Asian shares rose, with Tokyo's Nikkei up 0.8 percent and MSCI's index of shares elsewhere in Asia Pacific gaining 0.1 percent, although market players said momentum was slowing.
"The market probably ran a bit too hard over the past two weeks led by miners. The consumer sentiment has improved but some of the economic challenges still remain," said Lucinda Chan, a director at Macquarie Equities in Australia.
CHINA BOOST
China's National Bureau of Statistics said annual industrial output growth rebounded to 8.9 percent in May from 7.3 percent in April, outpacing a median forecast of 7.5 percent.
Annual growth in retail sales rose to 15.2 percent in May from 14.8 percent in April, slightly ahead of forecasts, partly due to a moderate pace of deflation.
Together, the two read-outs suggested a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) government stimulus plan, allied with consumer spending, is starting to overcome weak global demand for the exports that powered China's breakneck growth in recent years.
"We expect the economy to accelerate in the remainder of the year because currently we see policy-driven investment growth but at the same time we expect that exports should have bottomed and will gradually improve," said Qing Wang, an economist with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong.
CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC
Speaking at a banking conference in Beijing, European Central Bank Governing Council member Christian Noyer said there were several reasons to be cautiously optimistic about economic prospects for the euro zone.
Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France, said the decline in inflation to date could boost disposable income in the bloc by as much as 3.5 percentage points by the middle of this year.
The International Monetary Fund has raised global growth estimates for 2010 to 2.4 percent from 1.9 percent, and confirmed its April forecast for a 1.3 percent contraction in 2009, a G8 source who has seen the latest figures said on Thursday.
But underscoring the opacity of the outlook, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the global economy was set to contract by close to 3 percent this year, worse than the IMF figure and its own previous estimate of a decline of 1.75 percent.
"I personally believe you might be able to see some aspects of recovery in 2009 and 2010, but from a policy point of view, that isn't the core question because we have a large degree of uncertainty," Zoellick told reporters. (Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Jan Dahinten)