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Welcome to the first more or less of 2015 on the BBC World Service.

I'm Tim Halford.

We always think that the start of a new year is the perfect time to reflect on the year that just went by.

And that's what we're doing today with the final instalments of our numbers of the year,

where we look at the most interesting and important numbers from 2014.

One place where the new year doesn't begin on January 1st, of course, is China.

And it's the subject of our first number from Robert Pestin, the BBC's economics editor.

Well, the number that I've been obsessed with for, you know, actually decades now,

has been the rate of China's growth.

For 30 years, it grew at a sort of mind-boggling rate, 10% a year.

Which means that the economy is doubling in size roughly every seven years.

That's right.

But that all stopped when, you know, the global economy hit the skids in 2008.

And actually it fell very sharply.

And then the Chinese government did something remarkable, which is it persuades you,

it's banks to lend as if there was no tomorrow.

...