Restructuring's progress

CHINA'S 7.4-PERCENT ECONOMIC GROWTH IN the first quarter is reassuring not only because it beat market expectations by a shade. More importantly, it signalled desirable progress in the transformation of the world's second-largest economy away from unbalanced and unsustainable growth.

Most observers believed that China would report its slowest growth in five years as a result of unanticipated negative trade growth and slower investment so far this year.

Yet, official statistics put the country's latest quarterly expansion the same as that in the third quarter of 2012, a 0.1 percentage point higher than the median forecast of 7.3 percent.