China's 2014 GDP revised down from 7.4% to 7.3%

China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced Monday it had revised the country’s 2014 growth rate to 7.3% from 7.4%, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bureau cited the chief reason for the change as the services sector, which it said had grown by 7.8% rather than 8.1%. That meant a drop of RMB32.4 billion (about US$5 billion) for the country’s gross domestic product to RMB63.614 trillion. (China’s growth goal for the year was “about 7.5%”.) If this is the start of more meaningful revision process by the statistics bureau, it could bring Chinese practices more in line with other countries, even if the information is released several quarters late, economists said.