China increases size of economy, no policy change
By Xu Dashan (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-21 06:02

The revision did not change China's status as the world's largest developing country, he added. "We cannot forget China still has more than 100 million people in poverty."

A port in Ningbo, East China's booming province of Zhejiang [newsphoto]

Zhuang Jian, a senior economist with the Asian Development Bank's Resident Mission in China, said the revisions paint a more accurate picture of the economy.

"The ratio of investment and consumption to GDP have thus become more reasonable and healthy," he told China Daily.

Bert Hofman, chief of the economics unit of the World Bank Office in Beijing, said the data provide better information on the current status of the economy as well as on structural issues such as sectoral shares in the economy.

"The new data are very timely," he said, "as many policy issues that the government wants to tackle in the forthcoming 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) need reliable data."

Hofman noted that some of the policies drawn up based on previous numbers, such as investment to GDP and services to GDP, could change in light of the new figures.

It is not uncommon that countries with rapid growth regularly see major revisions in their GDP, the World Bank pointed out.

Among the recent examples are Indonesia, where a 2004 revision resulted in a 17 per cent increase in GDP; Italy, where a 1987 revision showed an increase in 1982 of more than 17 per cent; and Norway, where a 1995 revision resulted in an increase of some 11 per cent in measured GDP.