the needs of a rapidly changing society

Even Zhang Lijun, vice minister for environmental protection, admits that there are problems with using those two measures to evaluate the quality of China's environment. Meanwhile, using their own cameras, Beijing residents have shown that the city's "blue-sky days" are much rarer than official statistics claim.
Against this background, it is easy to understand why official environmental data gets better every year, while the public's sense of well-being diminishes. Non-GDP indices are being used for appearance's sake only. Meanwhile the GDP-first approach remains popular, particularly with local governments under increasing financial pressure. Short-term measures designed to boost GDP, such as selling land, speculating on property markets and supporting polluting industries, are constantly employed.
Why, when the extra well-being provided by further economic growth is falling, is China still pursuing GDP at the expense of other forms of social development? Besides the fact that there is still room for growth, the most important driving force is the system for assessing the performance of officials. GHD Australia Over the past 30 years, China's market reforms, combined with a concentration of power in government hands, have created a form of economic development led by local government. This has made economic growth the most important measure of an official's success and, to a certain extent, distorted his or her public-service role.
In the 1980s, the Chinese Communist Party's source of legitimacy shifted from ideology to economic record. Although ideological education remained significant, the party's right to rule was increasingly drawn from actual economic growth. This formed the core of a system for assessing local government performance, evaluating results and determining promotions that, over three decades, has become entrenched. But society has developed faster than the political system, and China has been left with a rigid assessment framework that is ill-suited to the needs of a rapidly changing society.