China's GDP Data Delay Points to Murky Economic Picture

For the past quarter century, China was run by a well-oiled government bureaucracy that predictably focused on the economy as its top priority. That may no longer be the case. Xi Jinping, China's top leader, made clear on Sunday at the opening of the Communist Party's national congress, a twice-a-decade gathering of the country's ruling elite, that politics and national security were paramount. That point was reinforced the next day when Beijing made the unusual move of delaying what should have been a routine, closely stage-managed release of data on how the economy fared in the past three months. "It…