GDP not the be all and end all

A Chinese worker processes steel at a factory in Qingdao city, East China's Shandong province, July 1, 2016. [Photo/IC]

According to a new gross domestic product accounting system adopted by the National Bureau of Statistics, China's GDP in 2015 increased by 879.8 billion yuan ($131.76 billion), an increase of 1.03 percent in size.

The new GDP system was adopted to incorporate the emergence of new commercial activities and the large volume of non-monetary transactions, which were not included in the previous national economic measurement system.

The reason why China created 13 million new jobs in 2015 despite its economic deceleration is that many new economic activities played an important role in expanding employment.

If the old GDP statistical system dominated by the secondary industry had been maintained, any economic statistics from the booming development of the new economy would not be reflected in the GDP figure.

Compared with the lingering slump in the secondary sector, e-commerce has achieved remarkable growth, which calls for a new GDP accounting method to raise the weight of the new economy in the national economic statistics.

The adoption of the new GDP accounting system will help the measurement of China's economic performance adapt to the changing economic situation, and will make its GDP figures better reflect the actual economy. However, the country should be particularly wary of the GDP-dominated performance evaluation when it is seeking to bid farewell to its "world factory" status.

When China's economic growth reaches a certain level, any continuous obsession with economic indicators will add to the already-controversial extensive growth and exacerbate the country's unbalanced development.

GDP is still expected to be a particularly important economic figure in China in the years ahead, but we should not focus on GDP alone. What we should focus on is more balanced economic development and better natural and institutional environments that increase people's sense of happiness.