It's high time Beijing kicked its addiction to GDP numbers

Making a fetish of anything is foolish, but making a fetish of gross domestic product is worse than that. It's not only unwise, it's unhealthy.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what China's government has done. Lacking any kind of a popular electoral mandate, China's rulers have long based their claims of legitimacy on their ability to generate rapid growth in GDP.

For years ministers drew a line in the sand. Growth must be supported above 8 per cent, they said, in order to sustain full employment.

Any failure to keep GDP growth above that level would be regarded as political failure, and a potential threat to the Communist Party's rule.

So when activity slowed after the 2008 international financial crisis, the Chinese authorities pulled out all the stops, ordering the country's banks to lend as much money as it took to stimulate the economy and maintain growth.

They succeeded, but increasingly China's leaders have come to realise their obsession with GDP is both distracting and destructive.