Bear in mind GDP can be manipulated yet true at the same time. If the government tweaks regulations, lending criteria and does other things to trigger huge spe

Bear in mind GDP can be manipulated yet true at the same time. If the government tweaks regulations, lending criteria and does other things to trigger huge spending on building pointless ghost cities, that will legitimately increase GDP because GDP is just summing up "stuff being done". There's a very subtle but deeply embedded assumption in western talk about GDP: that high GDP indicates a lot of useful things are being made and sold. But in a hard-left economy like China that correlation is weak; it's possible for lots of people to be doing things that aren't useful.