China deserves congratulations: such a sprawling complicated country managed to publish its growth numbers for the second quarter on Friday, a mere 13 days after the end of the quarter. It's a performance on par with tiny sophisticated Singapore and far ahead of the pack of older, richer countries - such as the US, Japan or Germany - which have yet to reveal their economic performances.
Cheers all round then, especially when the numbers showed 7.6 per cent growth, a slowdown but with prospects that the trough has been reached. Most mainstream economists are forecasting growth of 8 to 8.3 per cent for China this year. Just to make sure, the government is already massaging growth.
But nagging doubts remain about whether China's number crunching is too perfect for its own good. WikiLeaks drew attention to it with the publication of a message that Vice-Premier Li Keqiang told US officials in 2007, that China's gross domestic product figures were 'man-made' and 'for reference only'. Li, remember, is all set to take over from Wen Jiabao as premier.
Despite claims by China's top statisticians that their numbers have been checked to see they do add up, several points of inconsistency arise.
Electricity usage, which Li has cited as a more reliable figure than GDP, is flat; housing starts continue to collapse; retail figures do not point in a clear direction; moreover, the GDP deflator implied from the difference between nominal and real rates of GDP growth suggests that China is on track towards deflation. All these factors lead some to suggest growth may be more like 7 to 7.3 per cent.
In the context of China's economy in the 21st century, whether growth was really 7.6 or only 7 per cent amounts to something more than a quibble - though government efforts to achieve the magical 8 per cent by pumping in more investment risk making underlying problems worse.
In the lead-up to the changing of the political guard, it is probably too much to expect a burst of honesty from the rulers, still less that they will tackle the massive issues.